Metal Recycling and Stainless Steel Extraction

In about 50 shredder plants in Germany, they find a turbulent end: washing machines, old cars and bicycles are shredded with deafening noise using several thousand hp. What remains is: an uncontrolled material flow of metals and plastics. So far, mainly iron, the actual scrap, and part of the non-ferrous metals could be sorted out and recycled. However, the sorting technologies used to date could not detect stainless steel. Thanks to new technology, which detects individual parts by means of electromagnetic waves and exhausts them via air flow, it is now possible to clearly separate even stainless steel parts. If this technology was used as a standard in German shredding facilities, not less than three ocean liners loaded with raw material could be saved each year.
All information about ressource efficiency (only in German):
www.ressource-deutschland.de
On behalf of Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety of the Federal Republic of Germany