Shred1 Ballistic Separators

Since introducing the Shred1 Ballistic Separator 6 years ago, Eriez has installed units in various shredding yards, steel mills and slag processing facilities throughout North America. These innovative separators utilize ballistics to upgrade frag by segregating the copper bearing materials from the rest of the ferrous materials. Customers using Shred1 Ballistic Separators report increased revenues and reduced overhead.

The separators deliver two distinct fractions: a premium low-copper ferrous product and a traditional #2 shred. In operation, material is presented to a high-speed (1,000 fpm) belt and passed over a magnetic head pulley. Ferrous with low copper content sticks to the magnetic pulley and is dragged behind the splitter. Larger materials, which are less magnetic due to size, shape and copper content, are influenced more by the speed of the belt than the attraction of the magnet and, therefore, get thrown over the splitter.

The low copper, or #1 shred, is about 75 percent of the total material volume. It goes directly to a stacking conveyor without going through a picking conveyor. The #1 fraction is typically 0.16 to 0.17 percent cu. Recycling Product Manager Chris Ramsdell explains, “This #1 shred fraction has proven to be very desirable to steel mills.”

The #2 fraction, high copper, is the other 25 percent of the total material. It goes through a manual picking station to pick copper bearing material. Ramsdell says, “We have customers that used to manually pick seven pounds per ton of ferrous processed. After installing the Shred1, the pickings went to 13 pounds per ton.”

He adds, “This is being accomplished with reduced picking labor because they only need to pick through 25 percent of the ferrous stream. Pickers are more efficient because of reduced volume.”

Shred1 Ballistic Separators operating in the field and associated customer feedback verify the safety, reliability and effectiveness of this equipment. Eriez has made only a few very minor modifications to the design of Shred1 Ballistic Separators since the 2011 introduction. “A couple of years ago we added a third pulley that directs the frag down and away from the underside of the machine and into the #1 shred (low-copper) chute,” Ramsdell says. “We also redesigned access panels and bearing covers to allow for greater maintenance accessibility.”

Some customers combine the Shred1 Ballistic Separator with an Eriez P-Rex permanent rare earth magnetic drum, effectively improving their entire process. This system, referred to as the CleanStreamprocess, recovers more ferrous metals and concentrates 75 percent of the post drum magnet flow into a low-copper premium shred. It also eliminates the need for a scavenger magnet, a Z-box air system and hand picking the entire flow. According to Ramsdell, this has amounted to increased customer revenues in the millions of dollars.