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US 5,169,073 AGranted
Process for separating and recovering lead, rubber and copper wires from waste cables
AssigneeConsiglio Nazionale Delle Ricerche
InventorsAnna Marabini, Thomas Meloy, Pei C. Huang, Vittorio Alesse
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Abstract
The present invention relates to a process for separating and recovering copper wires, lead grains coming and rubber grains coming from waste cables, through washing, gravimetric separation, screening and by flattening the lead grains thereby facilitating their ready recovery.
Claims10
A process for separating and recovering rubber, lead and copper wire from granules of a waste cable material comprising the steps of:
- (a) washing the granules of the waste cable material to be separated in a water stream to remove lighter polluting elements from residual waste cable product;
- (b) treating the residual waste cable product obtained in step (a) with a thick medium to remove rubber which is separated as a light fraction, while a heavy fraction remains of lead and copper in a residual mixed product;
- (c) classifying the remaining heavy fraction obtained in step (b) into narrow classes of residual mixed products, each class having similar granulometries, by means of elliptical vibrating screens, wherein granules possessing a granulometry less than 4 mm are separated yielding copper granules and lead granules in a residual mixed product;
- (d) flattening the lead granules contained in each class of residual mixed product obtained in step (c) by means of a ball mill;
- and
- (e) subjecting the heavy fraction to screening by means of shaking vibrating screens, wherein
- (i) the residual mixed product from step (b) having a granulometry ranging from 4 to 10 mm are thereby separated into lead and copper, and
- (ii) each class of residual mixed product from step (d) is thereby separated into copper, lead and mixed product.
5 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.