Technical Breakdown of Scrap Metal Shredding & Sorting Lines

Technical Breakdown: How an Automated Scrap Metal Shredding and Sorting Line Maximizes Recovery

Recycling mixed scrap metals—such as automobile shells, industrial offcuts, home appliances, and structural steel—presents a dual challenge: size reduction and material purity. Downstream steel mills and non-ferrous smelters require clean, densely compacted feedstock free of rubber, plastic, and dirt.

To achieve steel furnace feed standards while reclaiming valuable copper and aluminum, modern recycling facilities rely on an integrated scrap metal shredding and sorting line.

Step 1: Heavy Primary Shredding & Shearing

Bulky metal scrap is fed via a heavy-duty chain conveyor into a low-speed, high-torque double-shaft shredder. The primary shredder shears large structures into manageable pieces (100–300 mm), loosening mechanically bonded components without generating excess dust.

Step 2: High-Speed Secondary Crushing

Shredded metal pieces pass into a hammer mill crusher. High-speed rotating hammers violently impact the material, achieving two crucial goals:

1. Size Uniformity: Reducing material size down to dense, spherical pellets (20–80 mm).

2. Paint & Impurity Stripping: Stripping away surface paint, coatings, rust, and adhering plastic or rubber.

Step 3: Multi-Stage Separation Sequence

Once crushed and dedusted via a pulse dust collection system, the material stream enters a continuous automated separation chain:

- Air & Zigzag Classification: Removes light dust, foam, film, and paper light fractions.

- Magnetic Separation: High-intensity magnetic drums pull out magnetic ferrous steel (iron) with over 98% purity.

- Rotary Trommel Screening: Classifies remaining non-magnetic materials into distinct particle size fractions to optimize downstream optical and eddy current sorting.

- Eddy Current Separation: Uses high-speed rotating magnetic poles to induce eddy currents in non-ferrous metals (copper, aluminum, brass), repelling them away from non-metallic plastics and rubber.

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