Looking at Shredding Plant Configuration and Its Performance for Developing Shredding Product Stream. (An Overview)

H.R. Manouchehri

Nowadays more and more products are produced or manufactured to full-fill the consumption needs. More and more products are consumed due to increasing the world’s population, technology development and emergence of new products, as well as willing for having better life style. However, sustainable development requires the optimal use and recycling of the natural resources and wastes respectively. In fact recycling is the final productive use of end-of–life vehicles (ELVs) and other obsolete appliances, as well as industrial and municipal wastes.

LEVs, obsolete appliances and industrial wastes have become major resources for production of iron and steels, aluminium, copper, and other metals, as well as composites. Shredding and recycling plants are built to first shred the obsolete goods in pieces and produce feed for subsequent processing plant where the feed from mixed scrap is processed to achieve high grade fractions of different material streams for metallurgical and other uses.

Currently, the rate of recovery for obsolete goods in shredding and recycling plants, around the world, reaches to maximum 75-80% and about 25% of the scrap is landfilled. However, due to social, economical and technical view points the recycling rate must be increased in an environmentally sound and technically viable manner. Mapping and Development of Shredding Plant is part of MISTRA project in optimizing and improving the metal recycling for Iron and Steel industry in Sweden with general aim to improve recycling rate and to make a roadmap with respect to fragmentization and physical separation for shredding plants in order to have more efficient recycling plants in future.

This report is part of Mapping and Development of Shredder Product Stream that reviews the metal recycling, shredding plant and its constitutes, identification, sorting and separating techniques for different size fractions of raw material after shredding, and also processes for shredding residue. Finally the recycling scenarios with respect to the new EU legislations for ELVs and changing in cars composition by substitution of lighter materials like aluminium and reinforced composites instead of iron and steel are discussed.