Optimum water pulsation of jig separation for crushed plastic particles

Mechanical separation of different plastics should be established in planning and constructing a recycling plant for scrapped office and home appliances. The authors studied jig separation of small plastic particles (two types of burn-resistant polyethylene (PE) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC)) using a TACUB jig. The size of the particles was 0.5–3 mm and the specific gravities of the two PEs and PVC were about 1.1, 1.3 and 1.4, respectively. The jig separation experiments were carried out under various water pulsations, at which the amplitude, frequency, and pattern of pulsation were varied.Based on the observation of separation progress and water pulsation, it was found that the upstream velocity of the pulsation is a very important factor to form high grade PE and PVC product layers with high efficiency. Moderate fluidization of particle bed caused high separation performance. High-grade PE and PVC products over 99.8% were recovered under pulsations of small frequency and amplitude. The optimum separation condition was determined easily by measuring the fluidity of the plastic beds in the separation chamber.