Development of advanced CRT disassembly technology

One of the objectives of this project is to develop and demonstrate waterjet technologies capable of effectively and efficiently cutting CRTs in order to separate the faceplate from the funnel. The developed technology is capable of separating CRTs at the frit line or just below in order to achieve both high-lead and low-lead cullet output compositions. This capability extends potential secondary markets for recovered CRT glass to include architectural and construction applications by avoiding the environmental concern for leaded glass which exceed the USEPA TCLP test threshold. The process assures continuous cutting of various sizes of CRTs at the competitive processing rate and high line throughput. The study involved CRT cutting using various nozzle configurations and various conditions of the jet-substrate interactions. A continuous cutting system was designed based upon information from experimental data and optimization procedures. In this system sequentially located cutting nozzles are fixed and the CRT moves along a conveyor system. A full size, laboratory scale prototype demonstrating this technology was constructed and successfully tested. Another objective of this exploratory study was to determine the technical feasibility of fluidized bed based technology for cleaning CRT glass cullet. An experimental laboratory setup for glass cleaning was constructed and glass decontamination was investigated. The setup entails a glass cylinder filled by water and equipped by an air nozzle at the bottom. Cleaning was achieved by stirring of the water bath containing glass cullet by the injected air stream. Observation of glass motion in the course of cleaning demonstrated that the surface processing was mostly due to fragment collisions. The results of cleaning were evaluated by visual inspection of the generated surfaces and examination of the size distribution of the glass cullet. A range of process characteristics and bed formulations producing visually clean cullet without undue reduction in the cullet size was determined.