Components’ Characterization of End-of-Life Dishwashers

Abstract

The treatment of Wastes of Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) is a significant source of secondary raw materials. Ferrous and non-ferrous metals, electronic equipment, and plastics are among these materials. One of the most common metals sourced out of WEEE is stainless steel. Dishwashers are common sources of stainless steel, so large amounts of stainless steel can be recovered from them. In this project, dishwashers were submitted to size reduction via shredding, and the shredded products went through a magnetic separator (which separates all the magnetic ferrous components), an eddy current sensor (which separates all the non-ferrous components) and an induction sorting sensor (which removed all the metallic fractions). This procedure led to the following two streams: one with stainless steel, boards, and cables and another stream mainly including plastic. In the next stage, the stainless-steel stream passed through a high-intensity magnetic separator, leading to a magnetic and a non-magnetic stream. Thereafter, hand sorting was applied to both streams which aimed to increase the recovery from each stream.