ERIEZ MAGNETICS: CASE STUDY

The recycling industry is perpetually looking for innovative new products able to mine the ferrous and nonferrous metal found in the automotive shredder residue (ASR) streams. Despite improvement in recovery technology, scrap yard operators still know intuitively that they continue to miss metal as they watch potential profits go to the landfill. Now intuition can be confirmed with hard data.

The Eriez® Metal Loss Monitor (MLM) was developed to quantify the effectiveness of what is sometimes a very qualitative process. This device takes the guesswork out of estimating metal losses, and gives users the ability to spot metals that would otherwise be lost.  It applies smart phone technology to keep operators informed via automatic text and email alerts when ‘hits’ exceed pre-determined thresholds.

While the MLM was developed and tested in Eriez Technical Center and in factory trials, the R & D team recognized that a full-scale field evaluation would be the acid test. Knowing that installing and testing at a customer site was critical, Eriez identified several processors who indicated a Metal Loss Monitor would be helpful to their operations by increasing metal recovery.

In particular, one person who expressed a keen interest was George Adams, CEO of SA Recycling who are known as a world leader in the metal recycling industry. SA Recycling serve both a regional and worldwide market having more than 50 facilities located in California, Arizona and Nevada.  As a full service ferrous and non-ferrous metal recycler, the company continually strives to improve metal recovery.

Processor sought improved recovery

The MLM began to pay for itself soon after it was installed when it alerted users that an excessive amount of metal was being lost.  “A product such as this has been needed for a long time,” said Adams. “We simply don’t know what value is leaking out into the waste stream and we don’t know when equipment is out of adjustment, or needs maintenance until our metal yields are down.”

“Now we are aware of how much metal we’re losing in ten minute increments and can take action immediately,” he noted. “And we can know this anywhere on the globe by the software’s web portal and remote reporting with instant messages.”

The MLM continually counts metal losses, giving users the ability to observe the performance of their system over time. Metal that passes the monitor produces an alarm signal (horn/beacon) and the event is recorded in a data file. With the MLM in place, maintenance issues and adjustment requirements are quickly spotted when losses spike. The data gathered also offers beneficial insight needed to properly evaluate whether additional or different separators should be incorporated to reduce metal losses. In essence, the MLM system is a useful tool to help troubleshoot and improve overall circuit performance.

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