Experimental Comparative Study of Different Tribocharging Devices for Triboelectric Separation of Insulating Particles

摘要

Several tribocharging devices are commonly used for charging insulating particles in order to separate granular plastic mixtures using vertical triboelectric separator. However, there is no comparative analyze of these devices when tribocharging is achieved in the same climatic conditions and using identical samples of insulating particles. The objective of this paper is to carry out an experimental study that compares several tribocharging devices build-up in the laboratory, which are: rotating cylinder, tribo-cyclone, static tribocharger, propeller-type and the fluidized bed. The study was performed using two granular samples of PVC and PEHD, having two different particle sizes of 1 mm and 2 mm. Experimental results showed that when tribo-charging pure samples of either PVC or PEHD tribo-cyclone is the most efficient. However, when mixed samples are processed the fluidized bed device gives best results of electric charge and separation efficiency.