Capital Equipment News February 2023

SCREENING

The Kwatani engineering department is where all R&D and design work resides.

Recycling goes hand-in hand with screening

and difficult to screen. Strands of copper wire, for instance, simply do not pass through a screening medium as easily as aggregate stone or sand. Similarly, chips of rubber produced by a tyre shredder are also likely to be highly varied in shape, size and consistency. “This means that anyone wanting to screen industrial waste in a commercially sustainable way is unlikely to find an off-the-shelf screen design to do this,” he explains. “Detailed testing of material on different screens – or with a range of screening dynamics and parameters – is usually the only way to find a cost-effective solution.” The real challenge is that most recycling demands an economy of scale, in which a sufficient volume of material can be effectively recycled to overcome the low margins of the final product. It is therefore not enough to find an in-principle solution; the duty that a screen must accomplish is a key variable in its success. Testing is the future “Kwatani has decades of experience in understanding customers’ screening

There is growing pressure for industry to conduct more recycling of waste products, as the world embraces the concept of a circular economy. Relevant screening technology, argues Kwatani’sWarrenMann, is going to be a vital contributor to this recycling journey. As a specialist in vibrating screens, Kwatani is adept at finding solutions for difficult recycling challenges. R ecycling waste material is a no-brainer for the planet, and suitable screening applications have to be developed to make it a reality. “Everyone wants to recycle more; it makes sense environmentally and it’s the right thing to do,” says Kwatani business development manager Warren Mann. “Recyclable waste is generally low value, however, so any recycling solution must have a highly cost-effective strategy for separating different elements of the product.” Screens have more power Mann highlights that, unlike most mined materials, the shape and other characteristics of products that the industry wants to recycle are often irregular

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