Recycling of cable waste

The project "Recycling of cable waste" has been executed by KEMA Nederland in order to determine how much cable waste is recycled today and can be recycled in the future. By making an inventory of modern recycling processes for several types of cables and testing these processes on an industrial scale, the potential of cable recycling is demonstrated. Besides a further recovery of metals, the feasibility of plastics recycling from particular waste streams has been shown in this project. After recovering 90% of the metals from distribution cables, a plastic waste stream containing 80% PVC, 10% (XL)PE, 5% rubber and 5% metal was obtained. Firstly, the metal content was further decreased to 0.3% by using an electrostatic separator, recovering 85% of the residual metal. Secondly, in order to recycle the PVC had to be separated. The PVC can not be separated with conventional technologies due to a density overlap of the PVC and the rubber. By using a tribo-electric separator PVC with a purity of more than 98% was produced. This product can be purified by melt filtration to obtain a reusable PVC.