Plant for recycling automotive shredder residues (ASR) in Finland.

July 2017

The reference at a glance

Project

ASR plant at Kajaanin Romu Oy.

Technology

Recycling plant for automotive shredder residues (ASR)

Operating site

Kajaani, Finland

Industry

Recycling

Application

Automotive Shredder Residue (ASR)

Solution

Extended processing of fine fractions

Kajaanin Romu Oy operates one of Finland’s most cutting-edge plants for recycling scrap in the town of Kajaani, located approximately 500 km northeast of Helsinki. The company commissioned a BHS-Sonthofen plant for processing automotive shredder residue (ASR) fine fractions of particle sizes between 0 and 30 mm. It separates the feed material abundant with valuable metals into ‘light’ and ‘heavy’ fractions in a single pass. This allows the plant operators to economically produce fractions that can be sold profitably. Moreover, the plant significantly reduces the cost of material disposal at landfills.

Experience with the operation of plants for recycling automotive shredder residue has proven this time and again: One metric ton of the heavy non-ferrous fraction of material left over after shredding and processing large automotive, electrical, or electronic scrap components in recycling can contain up to 20 grams of gold and up to 300 grams of silver, as well as platinum and other precious and non-ferrous metals.

Operators report proceeds of about €3,000 per metric ton from the sale of the heavy non-ferrous metal fraction alone. BHS has taken improved fine fraction processing even further by integrating secondary cleaning of metals into the processing stage. This allows Finnish operator Kajaanin Romu Oy to unlock the value of reusable materials present in the ASR fine fraction. The plant has a throughput of about 10 metric tons per hour.

At the end of the process, even the non-ferrous metal fractions are cleanly separated in silos. This includes heavy ones such as copper, gold, and silver as well as light fractions such as aluminum. Initial experiences with the plant’s operation show that the proportion of salable non-ferrous metals amounts to about five to seven percent of the processed volume.

BHS-Sonthofen ASR systems not only process fine fractions from automotive shredders. They are also suitable for processing waste incineration plant slag and electronics scrap. This means that recycling companies can flexibly adapt their product portfolio in response to increasing requirements: The higher the proportion of electronic components and platinum in vehicles and electronic devices, the greater the volume of valuable substances that can be extracted for reuse.