Shred

I was watching a video of the yard I frequent and they have a shredder so you can see the stuff that i always see in the mountain pile turned into the the pile of shred . So what become of this stuff, is it sold as is & if so , is there assays performed with the shred to make sure the content stays within parameters .

as long as there is .0017 percent copper in the railcar or truckload then its considered #2 shredd which is what the majority of mills buy. There is no assay done on it they have downstream systems to take all the copper, aluminum, stainless and trash out of it. Trust me the yard wants to recover as much non ferrous as possible. If you shredd 600 to 1000 ton of material in a day and you can recover all the material out of the fluff you can then you are maximizing your shredders potential. Scrap yards spend 100,000s of thousands of dollars just so they can recover 1 to 2 percent more of the non ferrous material out of there fluff. Why send it to the landfill when you can recover it and get paid for it. Think about what 1 to 2 percent of 600 tons is its an extra 2 grand or more of material a day.

yea i bet the shredder dosent separate out transformers and electric motors as they are ferrous

Originally Posted by jghilino

yea i bet the shredder dosent separate out transformers and electric motors as they are ferrous

They probably use a Eddie-current system to separate out the non-ferrous.

Here it gets shredded. And loaded directly into rail cars and moves on to somewhere. They buy steel here as either light iron or heavy iron the stuff in the rail car is shredded heavy.

The shredder does separate transformers and electric motors. I can't tell you there specific grade off hand but I have always heard of them referred to as meatballs or something similar to that. They just look like smashed up motors that you would never ever be able to get the windings out of. Heck I am not even sure how they do it after its gone through the shredder. I have also seen gaylords of shredded boards that were picked out of the fluff. Like I said its almost 99.99 percent ferrous material when its shipped out if its not the yard is throwing away money it could recover. Name me one scrap yard owner who has a shredder and doesn't have a decent or great downsteam recovery system for there non-ferrous and fluff. I have even heard of yards running the fluff twice through the downstream to see if they can recover more non-ferrous out of it before they send it to the trash dump or incinerator. Remember this used to all be done by hand back in the day if you have been doing this for a long time and have ever worked around a shredder you can remember the old dog houses they had built and there would 20 guys in there picking through the fluff as it came out of the shredder. That is all done by x-rays and specialized magnets and drums now.

You are correct about the meatballs when referring to motors and transformers. Once the shred goes through, the fluff goes one way and all the ferrous goes the other way. Often times red metals and meatballs get through with the ferrous metals. The shredders I have been to have a line of guys hand picking through the ferrous to get as much red metals and meatballs out of it before it goes to the mills. Then they run their fluff through the downstream sorting to get all the non-ferrous out to maximize profits. They have x-rays and eddy currents and other high tech stuff to get the non-ferrous out. It is all automated and sorted to go into their respective piles. This is just what I have seen a the 3 shredders I have been through.

Meatball Separation:

Originally Posted by BarrenRealms007

Sorry but it will not work that way. When you combine the metals and start melting them the melting points change and the metals combine into one if they can.

But if steel melts at around 2500°F that means at 1900 steel is still inert & the copper becomes liquid
unless there are other facts ??

Originally Posted by BarrenRealms007

As far as I know an eddie current system is only good for the aluminum part of the material.

Well, at least it may separate out aluminum motors and transformers.

To add more to what barren said a majority of the steel used in those motors and transformers is not pure steel at all. There is going to be a lot of silicone steel.