Eriez Magnetics reports that sales of its eddy current separators for industrial and recycling markets have been setting a robust pace, boosted particularly by their latest model’s increased capability to separate beverage cans for recyclers. The company has expanded its manufacturing capacity for its line of eddy current separators in Europe where they recorded record sales in 2018.
Eriez Europe, based in the UK, sold a record number of over 40 units into the European market during the year. Due to the increasing sale of the separators and other expansion needs, a 3,500 sq ft extension to the company’s European manufacturing facility was completed in autumn 2018. It will enable the plant to increase its production capacity of separator rotors by a third per year, the company said.
Earlier, from its headquarters in Erie, PA, Eriez reported that sales of its new generation RevX-E eddy current separators are on the rise, especially to materials recovery facilities. The units are said to be exceptionally good at recovering beverage cans. “Independent tests prove our RevX-E units throw aluminum material nearly 20 percent farther than other brands,” noted Chris Ramsdell, recycling product manager “This extra distance improves aluminum grade and increases recovery, resulting in substantially more profits for recyclers.”
Designed for separation of nonferrous metals, the units feature an eccentrically mounted magnetic rotor within the non-conductive larger diameter shell. The rotor concentrates its eddy current forces into a zone of separation at the end of the belt. By focusing its field, this design ignores ferrous material in the flow. The eccentric rotor design reduces long-term wear due to heated ferrous build up.
The company offers two rotor assemblies to conquer the challenges of various recycling industry applications: LT2 and ST22. The LT2 8-pole rare earth eccentric rotor assembly is designed to sort coarse material greater than 1-inch. The ST22 is a 22-pole rare earth eccentric rotor assembly designed for recovery of nonferrous fines sized less than 1-inch. “The eccentric design incorporated into both rotor options protects against potential damage from ferrous contamination in the material stream while maintaining a high level of separation performance,” explained Ramsdell.
In operation, the separator utilizes permanent rare earth magnets to induce eddy currents into metallic particles. The separator consists of an external drum, an internal permanent magnetic rotor, a drive and a belt conveyor. The external drum shell of non–metallic composite material rotates at conventional belt conveyor speed. The internal rare earth alternating polarity rotor turns at much higher speed than the external shell. Through the induction of eddy currents and the resulting repelling forces, the alternating magnetic field selectively repels the non–ferrous metals and physically separates them from other materials with minimum product loss. For more info, see www.eriez.com.
