How to Efficiently Separate Copper from Waste PCB Recycling Production Lines

Waste printed circuit boards (PCBs) and their sealing strips contain a considerable amount of metallic value, with copper content typically ranging from 25% to 60%. SUNY GROUP's waste PCB recycling production line achieves high-purity separation of metallic and non-metallic materials through a systematic process, turning electronic waste into a reusable resource.

Crushing and Grinding: Preparing for Copper Separation

Waste PCBs have a complex structure, containing resin, fiberglass, and various metals. Therefore, the first step is to crush them to a suitable particle size for sorting.

The entire production line typically includes a coarse crusher, a fine crusher, and an ultrafine grinding unit, progressively pulverizing the circuit board into uniform particles, allowing the metallic copper to separate from the resin layer.

Separate Copper from Waste PCB Recycling Production Lines

During the crushing process, the internal temperature rise is strictly controlled to prevent the plastic components from melting due to high temperatures, which would affect the subsequent separation effect. Through this multi-stage crushing and grinding process, the mixture of copper and resin becomes more homogeneous, providing excellent material conditions for subsequent sorting.

Density and Electrical Difference Sorting: Precise Separation of Copper and Resin

The crushed mixture enters the airflow separator. Utilizing the difference in material density and weight, the system can initially coarsely separate large copper particles. Lighter resin powder is carried away by the airflow, while heavier metal particles remain in the sorting tank. This step significantly improves metal separation efficiency.

Subsequently, the material enters the electrostatic separator, one of the core technologies of the entire line. Metals and non-metals exhibit completely different charging characteristics in an electrostatic field. By adjusting the electric field strength and the inter-plate distance, deep separation of copper powder and resin powder can be achieved.

After multi-stage sorting, the purity of copper can be increased to over 99%, while the resin powder can be reused as filler, achieving true resource recycling.

Environmental Control System: Solving Dust and Emission Problems

Waste PCBs easily generate a large amount of fine dust during the crushing process. If not handled properly, this can impact the environment and operators.

To address this issue, the production line is typically equipped with a pulse dust removal system after airflow separation. With its high-efficiency filter and back-flushing structure, dust can be quickly captured and centrally processed, ensuring that there is no significant dust leakage during the operation of the entire equipment.