Carpco resolving separation anxiety

摘要

The demonstration begins. Finely chopped mixed metal and plastic particles drop from a small chute onto a brightly lit, slowly rotating stainless steel drum, which conveys the material beneath a high-voltage electrode. Bits of metal in the mix are imparted with a charge, lifted away from the drum, and deposited on the near side of a splitter plate and down into a collection bin. Meanwhile, the residual strongly charged plastic particles stick briefly to the drum and fall on the other side of the splitter and into a separate bin. This electrostatic separator, humming quietly away in a clean bright-orange metal and glass cabinet in an orderly laboratory at Carpco Inc. (Jacksonville, Fla.), is just one small-scale example of the material separation systems Carpco has developed for a range of industrial applications, including equipment designed to pull residual metal from wire chopper tailings or metal contaminants from ground plastic bottles at scrap recycling operations.