The most challenging material recycling

Construction and demolition waste is mostly bulky solid waste. It is generally generated during the construction, maintenance, and demolition of old buildings, so its basic composition is relatively consistent. Generally speaking, it mainly consists of soil, slag, concrete pile heads, metal, and wood.

Untreated construction waste is transported to areas around cities or suburbs, where it is either piled up in the open or disposed of in simple landfills. The volume of construction waste is extremely large, and this massive amount of construction debris has put pressure on the landfill capacity of many cities. A large percentage of the C&D material stream consists of small pieces. To separate most of the metals, some recycling systems sort these materials by hand. However, this method is inefficient and results in low recovery rates, and sorting massive amounts of construction waste by hand is extremely difficult.

Many construction materials can be repurposed, such as wood, bricks, clay tiles, gypsum drywall, and metal. Some other materials, including concrete, asphalt/asphalt shingles, and glass, it also contains recyclable components. It is noteworthy that with the development and advancement of sorting solutions, nearly 90% of C&D waste is actually "misplaced resources."

Sortek Group supplies a simple and effective automated sorting solution

Step 1: Preliminary Screening

Use a powerful electromagnetic lifter to transport construction steel chips and scraps. At the same time, manually sort medium-sized materials.

Step 2: Crushing

Heavy materials are crushed into small sizes. Then, a trommel screen is used for size-based separation, sorting materials into medium, large, and oversized fractions. Oversized materials are re-crushed. Meanwhile, air separator technology is used to separate light materials.

Step 3: Magnetic Separation

This step recovers non-ferrous metals, stainless steel, ferrous metals, and more. An eddy current separator removes non-ferrous metals. The induction sorting system also uses air ejection to separate all types of metals, with precise optimization for stainless steel and copper wires. Suspension magnets, block magnets, and drum magnets operate continuously to capture and automatically remove ferrous metals.

Step 4: Classification of Different Materials

Finally, the processed materials are classified into different categories based on their types and properties.