Experimental and numerical analysis of a new tribo-electrostatic separator with coaxial cylindrical electrodes for plastic binary granular mixtures

Abstract This paper is aimed to the description of a new tribo-electrostatic separation process where the top part of the separator is constituted by two coaxial electrodes and the bottom part comprises two cone-shaped electrodes. An experimental and a numerical analysis were carried out in which the main significant factors were investigated. The experiments carried out on three different binary mixtures of mm-size PA (polyamide), PC (polycarbonate) and PVC (polyvinyl chloride) particles showed that more than 80% of the total mass is recovered with high purity values up to 90%.