Waste Recycling Technologies

Waste Recycling Technology (WRT) is a sub-discipline of Mechanical Process Engineering. WRT is employed in production plants processing contaminated soil, construction wastes, scrap metal, recovered paper and the like. While WRT is well established in Central Europe, it is only just now catching on in emerging markets as well.

Goals

At the core of this course is the separation of mixtures of solid bulk materials according to physical properties such as color, electrical conductivity, magnetism and so forth. After having taken this course, the students should have concept not only of the unit operations employed in WRT but also of how these unit operations are integrated into the flow sheets of production plants.

Content

Introduction

Waste Recycling: Scope and objectives
Waste recycling technologies in Switzerland

Fundamentals

Properties of particles: Liberation conditions, Particle size and shape, Porosity of bulk materials
Fluid dynamics of particles: Stationary particle beds, Fluidized beds, Free settling particles
Flow sheet basics: Balancing mass flows
Standard processes: batch vs. continuous …
Assessment of separation success: Separation function; grade vs. recovery

Separation Processes

Separation according to size and shape (Classification): Screening, Flow separation
Separation according to material properties (Concentration): Manual Sorting, Gravity concentration; Magnetic separation, Eddy current separation, Electrostatic separation, Sensor technology, Froth flotation

General Information

Lecturer: Rainer Bunge
Language: English
ECTS: 3
Lecture: Tuesday, 13:45-17:30, bi-weekly, Room: refer to course catalogue
Course material: will be provided on Moodle