The Application and Utilization of Sensor Based Sorting Technology in the Automobile Shredding Industry

From the industry’s inception in the late 1960’s through the 1980’s, there was no known available technology, except for hand picking and perhaps some rudimentary, usually homemade, jigs, capable of recovering the NFM. As many as 20 laborers were engaged in the recovery of the NFM from the non-magnetic material. Obviously, this was extremely costly and in some cases the NFM was simply wasted along with the fluff.
In the late 1980’s, inexpensive rare earth magnets were developed, thereby making Eddy Current Separation Technology (ECST) available at a reasonable cost to the shredding industry. It was not long before nearly every shredder in the world utilized ECST to separate and recover the NFM from the fluff. However, the use of ECST was not perfect and usually the tailings from the ECS continued to be hand picked. Hand picking could be minimized by utilizing additional ECS units in either parallel or series applications, or in some cases both.