Micronized plastic waste recycling using two-disc tribo-electrostatic separation process

Abstract Triboelectrostatic separation of millimeter-size granular mixtures is nowadays widely used in the recycling industry. However, the separation of micronized particles of an average granulometric size of 100 µm is still inefficient. This paper is aimed to carry out an experimental investigation of a triboelectrostatic separation process based on a fluidized bed tribocharging system produced between a pair of rotating aluminum disks supplied by two high-voltage DC supplies of opposite polarities. The granular mixture used in this work is composed of micronized white pure virgin PolyVinyl Chloride particles (WPVC) and gray PolyVinyl Chloride particles that contain a small percentage of carbon (GPVC) of average size 100 μm. Moreover, a homemade method was developed to estimate the purity of the separated products. It was deduced that the separation outcome, in terms of recovery and purity, is efficient and depends on several factors: the high-voltage level, the rotating speed of the disks, the fluidization rate, the total mass of the fluidized bed and the composition ratio of the granular mixture.