Ferrous Metals
Among all the contrasting materials recycled throughout the world, iron and steel represent the greatest tonnages and require the most powerful processing equipment.
By-product material from the engineering industries, redundant tanks and silos, obsolete machine tools, retired railway locomotives, dismantled bridges, entire ships, demolished steel-framed buildings, worn-out motor vehicles and a multiplicity of discarded consumer durables all provide the feedstock of ferrous recycling.
Hydraulically-powered guillotine shears exert thousands of tones of pressure to cut heavy steel such as girders, rails and ship-plate into neat chunks of furnace feed. Baling presses compact lighter material into neat, easily-handled blocks.
Offcuts of sheet steel are cropped to furnace size by small ‘alligator’ shears which operate in just the way the name suggests.
Gas, plasma arc and other torch cutting techniques are used to reduce massive structures to processable sizes.
No sector of recycling has a greater range of technology at its disposal. But the most spectacular item of equipment is the shredder - an integral processing factory which will reduce whole car bodies to fist-size pieces of dense furnace feed, automatically separating ferrous metal from non-ferrous.
With the aid of rotating magnetic drums, iron and steel is extracted from the mixture of metals and other materials. Further separation of valuable non-ferrous metals such as copper and aluminum is then necessary and this is achieved by sophisticated methods using forced air or liquid sink-float systems allowing light metals to float and heavier types to sink. The eddy-current method allows non-ferrous metals to be separated in terms of their different conductivity levels in magnetic fields.
Most of these modern methods of processing are carried out automatically with computers often being used to maintain the highest levels of operating efficiency.
Secondary metal has become indispensable as the most economic raw material available to steelmakers. It now accounts for about 45 per cent of all steel produced worldwide. In addition, iron and steel foundries depend on a steady intake of highly competitive secondary material to provide the major proportion of their furnace feed.
Using secondary resources to make steel in place of iron ore has many advantages other than the vital consideration of cost. Recycled material is nearly 100 per cent metal and is generally available within easy reach, or is readily transported in bulk.
In contrast, iron ore has to be freed from tailings and chemical impurities and smelted in a blast furnace before it can be converted into steel. Only special directly-reduced top quality ore pellets can be fed straight into a steelmaking furnace. The use of secondary metal, in comparison to ore, gives a dramatic energy saving, significantly reduces the amount of water needed and causes less air pollution.
Because secondary metal is not available uniformly throughout the world, it has become an international commodity, being transported from abundant areas such as the United States and West Europe to countries which have a shortage.
Anything that is made from metal is recyclable. You can recycle
refrigerators, washers, lawn mowers, engines, fencing, pipe, wire, and any other
article made from metal materials. There is no reason to send any metal-based
products to the landfill.
Bring these materials to REMAT MH and, not only will you avoid paying dump
fees, but you will leave with extra cash in your hand.
