Separation of mixed waste plastics via magnetic levitation.
Waste Manag
; 76: 46-54, 2018 Jun.
Article
en En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-29506775
Separation becomes a bottleneck of dealing with the enormous stream of waste plastics, as most of the extant methods can only handle binary mixtures. In this paper, a novel method that based on magnetic levitation was proposed for separating multiple mixed plastics. Six types of plastics, i.e., polypropylene (PP), acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), polyamide 6 (PA6), polycarbonate (PC), polyethylene terephthalate (PET), and polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), were used to simulate the mixed waste plastics. The samples were mixed and immersed into paramagnetic medium that placed into a magnetic levitation configuration with two identical NdFeB magnets with like-poles facing each other, and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy was employed to verify the separation outputs. Unlike any conventional separation methods such as froth flotation and hydrocyclone, this method is not limited by particle sizes, as mixtures of different size fractions reached their respective equilibrium positions in the initial tests. The two-stage separation tests demonstrated that the plastics can be completely separated with purities reached 100%. The method has the potential to be industrialised into an economically-viable and environmentally-friendly mass production procedure, since quantitative correlations are determined, and the paramagnetic medium can be reused indefinitely.
Palabras clave
Texto completo:
1
Colección:
01-internacional
Base de datos:
MEDLINE
Asunto principal:
Plásticos
/
Eliminación de Residuos
/
Reciclaje
Idioma:
En
Revista:
Waste Manag
Asunto de la revista:
SAUDE AMBIENTAL
/
TOXICOLOGIA
Año:
2018
Tipo del documento:
Article
País de afiliación:
China
Pais de publicación:
Estados Unidos