Recycling Electrically-conductive Metal and Insulating Material from Cable Waste by Ultrasonic

The present technique of recycling waste wires and cables is the cable granulator technique. The cable granulator mostly adopt mechanical method to cut and grind cable wastes into short pieces and then use screen separation process to get metal (mainly copper) and insulating material (mainly plastic). However, cutting and grinding process causes serious copper losses which lead to economic loss and resources waste. Using the cavitation phenomenon induced by ultrasonic goes through water to separate copper and plastic from cable waste was studied in this paper. The results indicate that (1) the maximum separation rate occurred at water temperature is 60°C; (2) the shorter the cable length, the higher the separation rate, (3) generally it is more easier to recycle copper and plastic from cable which has high copper content (>;50%), and (4) the effect of solid-liquid ratio on separation rate showed complexity.