Improvement of the Fluidized Bed Tribocharging Device for Electrostatic Separation of Plastics from Electronic Medical Waste

摘要

Waste of electronic medical devices contains different type of valuable plastics intermixed, generating incompatibilities and limiting the reusing potential, so that the separation of plastics is a crucial operation in recycling. The tribo-electrostatic separation, based on charging the plastic mixture in a tribocharging device then separation of charged granules in high intensity electric field is an efficient method. The paper analyses the influence of sample weight, fluidizing air flow rate, and the shape of the tribocharging chamber on the efficiency of a fluidized-bed tribocharging device with the aim to improve the plastic mixtures separation. The results highlight that the granules charging in fluidized bed has greater efficiency if the section area of the tribocharging chamber is constant, with constant fluidizing air speed. The granules charge in fluidized bed devices increases with the number of collisions but in a greater measure with the impact energy between granules.