Castolin Eutectic solutions to boost productivity of recycling plants

Wearfacing critical equipment can help recycling businesses to substantially reduce their financial and environmental costs.

Recycling businesses play an increasingly important role in achieving sustainability goals. But to provide this critical service they must operate on a profitable basis and overcome a number of challenges. First, there is the wildly fluctuating value of recycled materials. The price of copper or aluminum, for example, can drop suddenly, making it less profitable or potentially even non-viable to recycle them. This is driving operators to seek maximum productivity with a minimum of equipment downtime. They rely on equipment operating efficiently and reliably, with a fast return to service in the event of a breakdown.

Second, increasing energy prices are a major factor. Therefore energy-efficiency is becoming crucial in maintaining profits as well as meeting increasingly stringent carbon emission targets.

Coping with heavy duty applications

To explore how wearfacing can help address these challenges it is useful to understand the nature, function and operating conditions of recycling machinery. While it is a complex industry that covers many segments, there are some common processes, including:

• Material collection and transportation to the recycling site
• Movement of materials within the site
• Shredding or crushing to reduce material to the right size for the next process
• Sorting into different material streams
• Further processing – including refining
• Supplying the recycled raw material to manufacturers or users

Throughout these activities frequent contact between the materials and the handling or processing equipment causes abrasion, erosion, impact, fatigue and vibration stress in various combinations. This ultimately results in wear, damage and potential failure.

What does wear really cost?

There are considerable costs associated with replacing worn parts. Not only in purchasing a new component but also the labor to fit it and the lost productivity while the machinery is out of service. The costs can multiply considerably when a sudden failure causes an unplanned outage.

For some key components, like the cutting elements in a shredder, wear also results in inefficient operation. For example, a worn cutting edge might cause material to be cycled through the shredder multiple times to achieve the correct size. Hence the machine is operating for longer, experiencing even more wear, using more energy, and needing extra labor to operate it.

It is even possible that a worn blade might need to be applied with more force than a sharp one. Again, this hikes energy costs and carbon emissions.

Wearfacing can make a difference
Wearfacing, sometimes known as hardfacing, can address these costs by extending component life through the application of a hard wearing and durable surface coating. This can be applied to a new component or as part of a repair, which restores and improves the component, giving it an extended service life in optimum condition.

Each type of recycling machinery and process sets different challenges in terms of materials handled, wear patterns, pressures, temperatures and presence of corrosive substances. Hard materials like metal can be especially challenging, but even apparently soft substances such as paper can cause substantial wear.

That means for wearfacing no two applications are the same, the structure and composition of the surface coating must be modified to meet specific requirements.

Tailoring wear management solutions to suit the application

For many types of recycling equipment, a simple protective approach is to line the surfaces prone to wear with CastoDur Diamond Plates (CDP®). This solution is an easy-to-weld steel plate overlaid with abrasion and erosion resistant alloys. It can, for example, be applied to line bulldozer and grab buckets, conveyor sides, chutes and any other containment or transport surface in the recycling plant.

Because they are highly resistant to abrasion, impact and vibration, these types of wear plate typically last five times longer than standard linings. They can be easily cut, shaped and fitted to protect any surface with screws, rivets or spot welding. Plates can be supplied as standard plates or as pre-cut and formed sections matched to the equipment’s size and shape. Flexibility in design is particularly important when lining the cylindrical or conical parts of a cyclone, or the inner surfaces of glass crushing, grinding and mixing machines.

For pipework, another ready-made and simple to install solution is available in the form of CastoTubes with tube sections, elbows and Y-joints with alloy-reinforced lining.

To extend the life of the crushing and cutting elements of crushers and shredders the surfaces can be reinforced by alloy and polymer wearfacing coatings, such as Castolin Eutectic’s MeCaTec, while welding wires can be applied to reinforce surfaces. The ideal case is to apply these solutions on new parts to act as a preventive measure. But they are often used in repair and restoration projects.

It is possible in some applications to restore the original shape and sharpness of a cutting surface. However, when it comes to components such as large hammers that can lose a considerable weight of metal when worn-out, restoration by welding is uneconomic. This is where it is important to apply wearfacing from the start to increase the life of the hammer. In back-to-back comparison tests with customers the difference in durability between treated and untreated hammers is very marked.

Support by technical application specialists
Castolin Eutectic has a global team of highly trained and experienced field engineers to help with assessment of wear problems, recommendation of solutions and training. This is supported by the Castolin Eutectic EcoTest calculator, which shows the savings in cost, and CO2 emissions for proposed wear protection solutions.

To find out more about how wear management solutions can increase the profitability and sustainability of recycling businesses, visit https://www.castolin.com/.