Recycling of PS/PVC granular waste using a fluidized-bed two-insulated-rolls-type tribo-aero-electrostatic separator

Before recycling, plastics must be sorted according to their polymer type. Triboelectrostatic separation represents a solution for the selective sorting of plastic mixtures, able to lead to high quality of the separation products. A fluidized-bed two-insulated-roll-type tribo-aero-electrostatic separator has been employed to recycle PS/PVC granular wastes. High purities, more than 99% for PS and about 98.5% for PVC, have been obtained by a single step separation of the size (2-3.15) mm. The recovery rates are roughly 80% for PS and 85% for PVC. If correlated with the feeding rate, the fluidization air flow rate in the range (16.7-33.4) l/s does not strongly influence the quality of the separation products. Three consecutive separations have been necessary in order to obtain high purity and acceptable recovery of the separation products in the case of the (4-10) mm size-class PS/PVC mixture.