Recycling of sludges and dusts grinding swarf - briquetting

Compacting oil-containing shear mud with our compactors is one of the most profitable technologies in the recycling business. Specific compacting cycles help to turn mud into compacted briquettes with oil content reduced to less than 5 %, depending on viscosity. The quality of lubricants and cooling lubricants produced this way is convincing. The lubricants can be separated by using simple filters and then be immediately returned to the raw material cycle, which helps to reduce more than 90% of cooling lubricant input needed and also results in considerable cost-savings.

Compacted shavings briquettes can be melted again which results in profitable sales, whereas non-compacted shear mud has to be taken to hazardous waste management sites. Compacting brings even more advantages when it comes to simpler handling when storing and moving the briquettes. Inductive heating of shavings produces ever more increased material weight.

Powdered waste of production facilities often results in increased technical efforts and expensive landfill costs. However, in many cases these dusts contain valuable metals. Due to the physical properties of the residuals and the required process parameters recycling is restricted to exceptional cases. Light metal dusts also lead to an increased risk of explosion due to their large specific surface area and their reactivity.

It is possible to produce stable briquettes of fine aluminium powders (d90 = 30 µm) without binding agents using the testing plant by ATM Recyclingsystems. The briquettes achieve a density of about 2 g/cm3 and corresponds to a compaction of the approximately 20-fold of the input material. This process allows a reduction of transport and storage costs, minimizing the risk of dust explosion and returning briquettes to recycling processes.

We engage in cooperation with the Montanuniversitaet Leoben, Chair of Nonferrous Metallurgy, and the Austrian Research Promotion Agency, in an innovative basic research project in pyrometallurgical recycling of agglomerated metal-containing industrial waste.