Copper recycling

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Copper recycling is the industrial reuse of copper scrap .

Companies in Western Europe with environmentally neutral process technologies and recycling routes ensure that copper is recycled in a circular manner. The metal trade collects the scrap metals, processes them and supplies the copper smelters with classified raw materials of the correct type. There are also direct recycling routes between industry and the recycling huts. Recycled copper has the same quality as the primary raw material . There are closed recycling channels for the copper-containing residues arising from copper production. Copper achieves a recycling rate of> 45% in Germany.

Raw material copper scrap

  • Copper Millberry: clean copper wires with a diameter of at least 1 mm. The wire must be "cold" d. H. be separated purely mechanically, without adhering dirt, grease, tin or residues from the burning off of the insulation. Millbery copper is distinguished by its shiny red-gold-yellow color.
  • Copper Berry: slightly oxidized copper wire
  • Copper Raff: oxidized or contaminated copper that has already been used, purity of at least 95 to 96 percent
  • Karat Birch: mixed copper scrap

Methods for copper recycling

Accompanying metals such as iron are separated from secondary raw materials such as scrap metal using magnets and plastics are separated from copper using density sorting . The pure copper scrap can be recovered by melting in an induction furnace . Then it can be processed into products again.

Low-copper scrap must be processed in a concentration melting process.

This largely avoids the deposition of substances in landfills .

See also

literature

  • Elvira Moeller (ed.): Handbook of construction materials - selection, properties, application. 2nd edition, Hanser, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-446-43169-0 , pp. 896–899 ( limited preview in the Google book search)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kupferinstitut  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.kupferinstitut.de  
  2. ↑ entry to Schrottpreise.eu , entry to schrottpreis.org , views March 17, 2015