文摘
Abundant waste toner cartridges have been generated from the use of printers. They contain aluminum, plastic, steel, and toner. Waste toner cartridges will pollute the environment if they are not properly treated. An environment-friendly recovery line of waste toner cartridges had been constructed in our previous work. Eddy current separation was employed to separate aluminum particles from plastic particles of crushed waste toner cartridges. However, hollow aluminum particles existed in crushed waste toner cartridges, and they have a rather low separation rate from plastic particles. There was little information about hollow aluminum particles in eddy current separation. For improvement of the efficiency of eddy current separation, models of eddy current force and movement behaviors of hollow aluminum particles in eddy current separation were established. In a comparison of horizontal throws of hollow aluminum particles to solid aluminum particles, we found hollow characters greatly decreased the horizontal throw (reduced about 0.03 m) of aluminum particles and destroyed the separation rate. Therefore, a new compactor was designed to eliminate hollow aluminum particles in crushed waste toner cartridges. This paper provides models of eddy current force and movement behavior of hollow nonferrous metallic particles in eddy current separation and contributed to improvement of the efficiency of the recovery line of waste toner cartridges.
