Basic Research on the Separation of Electronic Scraps with an Active-Pulsed Airflow Classifier

The separation mechanism with the active-pulsed airflow was studied fundamentally in this paper. The displacement, velocity and acceleration of the equal settling particles within the active-pulsed airflow were observed by a Memrecam Ci3 motion particle analyzer. Result of the research shows that in the active-pulsed airflow the acceleration of low-density particles is greater than that of high-density particles, which leads to a distinct difference of the velocity and the displacement of the equal settling particles. Therefore, a density-dominant separation of particles was achieved owing to the difference of the acceleration. The separation experiments of +2-0.5 mm electronic scraps show that the active-pulsed airflow has higher separation efficiency than the conventional classification with an upward and steady airflow. In addition, when the pulsated frequency is 2.0 Hz, the separation efficiencies with the active-pulsed airflow classifier are about 5-10% higher than that of the steady airflow ones.