Bunting Magnetics attracts business from UK plastics recycler

United Kingdom – Magnetic separation technology provider Bunting Magnetics Europe has installed a metal separation unit at the new Recapture Plastics recycling plant in Rochester, UK. The technology is claimed to ‘ensure a metal-free final product’.

Recapture Plastics’ facility is designed to handle up to 25 tonnes per hour of recycled plastic materials, with scope for future expansion. Plastic is sourced from across the UK, mostly in baled form. At Recapture Plastics, bales of mixed plastics are initially broken up and then shredded to reduce the particle size and to liberate materials for optimum separation. The shredded plastic mix then passes over the Bunting metal separation module where a strong magnetic drum removes ferrous metals and then an eddy-current separator ejects non-ferrous metals.

The Bunting magnetic drum uses ‘strong permanent’ rare earth magnets configured in an axial magnetic field. According to Bunting, this enables ‘high levels’ of separation with ‘minimal loss’ of clean material. The shredded plastic is fed evenly on to the top of the magnetic drum by a large vibratory feeder with out-of-balance motors.

Any ferrous and weakly magnetic material becomes attracted to the surface of the non-magnetic stainless steel shell by the stationary magnet element inside the drum. Attracted metal then moves with the rotational motion of the non-magnetic outer shell until it leaves the magnetic field and is deposited in a chute directly underneath the drum, away from the shredded plastic.