• Resources Recycling
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.39-46
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• 2004

Triboelectrostatic separation process is a technology that different particles charged after contact and rubbing different materials are separated in a high electric field. This technology has an advantage in that it can be used for separating non-conducting materials such as plastics unlike other electrostatic separation processes. There are two objectives in this study. One is to develop an effective continuous tribo-electrostatic separation process. The other is to apply the developed device for the separation of mixed plastics. Results show that almost all tested plastics reaches over 95% in yield and grade after separation.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2000.11b
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• pp.538-543
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• 2000

The purpose of this study is to develope electrostatic separation system for recycling of mixed waste plastics. The electrostatic separation system is designed and investigated the separation efficiency for separating of mixed waste plastics. Electrostatic separation system consisted of a tribocharger, separator (two electrode), collector (5 tray) and controller (positive/negative high voltage power supply). The tribocharger is a fluidized bed using tribo-electrification mechanism between particles and particles. In experimental results, the tribocharger of the fluidized bed was more effective separation efficiency. It showed the purity of $85{\sim}99\;%$ and the recovery of $80{\sim}98\;%$ from the powder of mixed plastics such as LDPE, HDPE, PP, PS, PET and PVC. Especially, In the separation experiment of Polyvinylchloride(PVC) which generates hazardous hydrogen chloride gas in case of the combustion. its purity was over 99 % and recovery was over 95 %.

• Resources Recycling
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.30-38
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• 2009

In this research, we studied the scale-up triboelectrostatic process for separation of PVC from higher gravity fraction of plastic wastes produced from wet gravity separation process. High density polyethylene (HDPE) was found to be the most effective materials for a tribo-charger in the separation of plastic tailings. In a commercial scale triboelelctrostatic separator unit, using the HDPE pipe-line charger, a grade of 99.1% with PET, PS and others and a recovery of 86% was obtained under optimum conditions at over 250 kV/m electric field, a splitter position of -8 cm from the center, and less than 40% relative humidity. The developed unit can process the plastic wastes at a 300 kg/h, and the product can be utilized as RPF or RDF of over grade 2.

• Resources Recycling
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.57-64
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• 2007

Triboelectrostatic separation of mixed three kinds of plastics, PVC, PET and PMMA, in the range of similar gravity has been performed through a two-stage separation process. Polypropylene (PP) and high-impact polystyrene (HIPS) were found to be the most effective materials for a tribo-charger in the separation of PVC, PET and PMMA. In the 1st stage using the PP cyclone charger, PVC grade and recovery depended considerably on the air velocity (10 m/s), the relative humidity (<30%), the electric field (>200 kV/m) and the splitter position (+2 cm from the center) in the triboelelctrostatic separator unit. At an optimum condition a PVC grade of 99.6% and a recovery of 97.5% was achieved. In the 2nd stage using the HIPS cyclone charger, a PMMA grade of 98.3% and a recovery of 97.0% was obtained under the conditions of 10m/s air velocity, over 250 kV/m electric field, central splitter position and less than 40% relative humidity.

• Resources Recycling
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.14-22
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• 2001

For the recycle of coal fly ash generated from power stations, we developed an electrocyclone system which can separate unburned carbon form coal fly ash, based on the fact that coarse fly ash particles contain higher amount of unburned carbon and unburned carbon particles are charged positively, and pure ash particles are charged negatively on contacting each other. Additionally, guide vanes were installed in the cyclone to control the cut size. Two types of electrode, stick and grid type, were designed to investigate the effect of electrode type. Results show that by introducing an electric field inside the cyclone, the yield increases by 5 to 15e1o. But the content of unburned carbon in the clean ash does not change significantly.