Don’t let valuables end up at the dump!

January 2016

The reference at a glance

Project

Recovery of precious metals after recycling of automobile and electronic waste

Technology

Rotor impact mill of type RPMV.

Operating site

Germany

Industry

Recycling

Application

Recovering precious metals from fine shredder fractions

Solution

New process based on the rotor impact mill

A metric ton can contain up to 20 grams of gold and up to 200 to 300 grams of silver, as well as platinum and other precious and non-ferrous metals. Heavy non-ferrous fractions of material left over after shredding and processing large automotive, electrical or electronic scrap components still hold a lot of value. Previously, the recyclable materials were deposited in landfills. Based on our unique process, BHS-Sonthofen processing plants can recover these metals.

The BHS complete solution for the fine processing of shredder residue takes up where others have left off: Resources that previously would have been landfilled or incinerated are returned to the material cycle for profitable recycling. The solution combines impact crushing technology with physical separation processes and covers all process stages from material infeed to the separation of individual fractions and dedusting.

In the first part of the process, the feed material is crushed and the light materials are separated. In the second stage, the remaining material is screened and separated according to its density. The end products are materials and metal fractions that are cleanly separated from each other by type and particle size.

The rotor impact mill of type RPMV is the centerpiece of the plant. It crushes the brittle hard materials and pelletizes the ductile, metallic ones. The standard plant delivers a throughput of around 10 metric tons per hour. Owing to these capabilities, the rotor impact mill (RPMV) provides the basis for cleanly separating non-ferrous metals from other materials.

At the end of the process, all fractions are cleanly separated in silos. Alongside the previously mentioned shares of precious metals such as gold, silver and platinum, the non-ferrous metal fraction also includes large quantities of aluminum, copper and brass, which are also marketable. Depending on the composition of the feed material, the BHS fine processing plant recovers between three and five percent of the waste material as marketable non-ferrous metals.
Operators also financially benefit from the fact that the entire process is largely automated: A single employee can control and monitor the entire plant. Another employee spends about half of their working hours on the material logistics.