JP2001070923A - Method for processing heat exchanger - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To highly accurately and efficiently sorts an disintegrated heat exchanger for a refrigeration apparatus into each its constituent materials. SOLUTION: In this method for processing, a heat exchanger 20 taken out from a refrigeration apparatus is crushed to a particle size of at most 20 mm by means of a crusher 2 and crushed articles 24 are classified into ferrous content 30 and nonferrous content 32 by means of a magnetic classifier 28. In addition, the classified nonferrous content 32 is classified into copper 38 and aluminum 40 by means of a nonferrous classifier 36.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a processing method for separating a heat exchanger provided in a refrigerating apparatus such as a used air conditioner or a refrigerator into various materials with high precision and efficiency.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Among home electric appliances, especially indoor and outdoor units of air conditioners are provided with heat exchangers made of valuable resources such as copper and aluminum, and the air conditioners have been used. In such a case, after the heat exchanger was taken out from the indoor unit and the outdoor unit, the heat exchanger was roughly crushed, further separated into individual materials, and reused.

[0003] The conventional processing method is described in more detail. First, a heat exchanger is charged into a large crusher to roughly crush to a size of about φ50 to φ100, and the crushed material is separated into iron using a magnetic separator. After sorting into non-ferrous components, and further pulverizing the non-ferrous components into a grinder to a size of about φ9 to φ20,
Further, iron was removed by a magnetic separator, and non-ferrous components separated from iron were separated into copper and aluminum by vibration sorting or the like.

[0004]

However, the conventional processing method has a problem in that the number of steps is large, equipment is required for each step, and the processing takes time.

In order to reduce the number of steps, fine crushing may be omitted. However, copper and aluminum are entangled with tens of percent of the non-ferrous material after coarse crushing and magnetic separation. There is a problem that the quality of the material is reduced.

The present invention has been made in view of the above-mentioned problems of the prior art, and provides a processing method for efficiently and efficiently separating a heat exchanger provided in a refrigeration system into respective materials. It is intended to be.

[0007]

In order to attain the above object, according to the present invention, there is provided a method for treating a heat exchanger, comprising the steps of: Crushed to a particle size of about or less, the crushed material is separated into ferrous and non-ferrous components by a magnetic separator, and the separated non-ferrous components are separated into copper and aluminum by a non-ferrous separator. I do.

The invention according to claim 2 is characterized in that a hammer-type crusher is used as the crusher.

Further, the invention according to claim 3 is characterized in that the crusher has a crushing particle size of 5 mm or more.

According to a fourth aspect of the present invention, the crusher is provided with a rostor having a large number of long holes having a minor axis of 20 mm or less, and the crushed material is removed from the crusher via the rostor. It is characterized by discharging.

[0011]

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 shows a method for treating a heat exchanger according to the present invention, in which the heat exchanger is crushed,
The steps from sorting to recovering valuable copper and aluminum as valuables are shown.

As shown in FIG. 1, a heat exchanger (object to be crushed) taken out of a household electric appliance such as an air conditioner is first put into a small crusher 2 and crushed. There are various shapes of heat exchangers to be crushed, and as the heat exchanger provided inside the indoor unit of the air conditioner, a substantially rectangular flat type, folded “he” Character type,
There are a tri-folded Δ type and the like. As the heat exchanger provided inside the outdoor unit of the air conditioner, a substantially rectangular flat type, an L type bent in an L shape, and a U shape are used. There are tuned U-types and the like, all of which can be processed by the processing method according to the present invention.

FIG. 2 shows a known hammer-type crusher (for example, manufactured by Lhasa Industry Co., Ltd.) adopted as the small crusher 2, which is rotatably supported by two bearings 4 and 4. A plurality of hammers 8,..., 8 are attached around the main shaft 6. As shown in FIG. 3, the hammers 8,.
It is disposed around the main shaft 6 at 90-degree intervals, and is attached so as to be rotatable around a pin 6a within a predetermined angle (about 60 degrees). The main shaft 6 is connected to a drive source (not shown) such as an electric motor via a pulley 10, and rotates by receiving a driving force of the drive source.

The heat exchanger charged into the input hopper (not shown) of the crusher 2 includes hammers 8,..., 8 rotating together with the main shaft 6, and fixed blades (not shown) fixed to the lower frame 12. The crushed material which has been crushed (crushed) to a predetermined size falls through an opening of a steel plate roster (screen) 14 attached to a lower frame 12 radially outward of the hammers 8,. I do.

FIG. 4 is an exploded view of the roaster 14, and in the case of the roster 14 shown in FIG.
A large number of φ20 round holes 16,..., 16 are formed in the upstream half of the
A large number of 20 mm × 40 mm long holes 18,.
In the heat exchanger to be crushed, the crushed material has openings 16,..., 16, 18,.
It is crushed repeatedly until it falls from 8.

Here, if the particle size of the material to be crushed after crushing is large, the material is liable to be entangled, and it becomes difficult to sort each material (copper, aluminum, iron, etc.) in the subsequent process, while the particle size is made smaller than necessary. This is disadvantageous in terms of processing capacity, and the crushing particle size is preferably 5 to 20 mm in consideration of the separability and processing capacity of each material. In addition, coarse crushing is desirable in order to crush the material to be crushed containing iron material to a particle size of 5 to 20 mm,
In the pulverization, the blade is easily chipped and the life of the blade becomes problematic. Therefore, in the present invention, a hammer-type crusher is used as the small crusher 2. In the hammer-type crusher, the size of the crushed particles is adjusted by adjusting the distance between the hammer and the rostral and the size of the opening of the rostral.

Table 1 shows the processing capacity when a hammer-type crusher is used and the size of the opening of the roast 14 is changed.

[Table 1]

The particle size of the crushed material is determined by the openings 16,.
When the sizes of 8,..., 18 are the same, it becomes easier to be uniform, and when the grain size is smaller, the entanglement of iron and non-iron and the entanglement of non-iron (copper and aluminum) during crushing are less. In addition, in order to investigate the relationship between the size of the opening and the degree of entanglement, tests were performed using various types of rostrors having different sizes of the opening, and the results shown in Table 2 were obtained.

[Table 2]

From Tables 1 and 2, when comprehensively considering the separability, uniformity and processing ability of the raw materials, a large number of long holes of the same size are adopted as the openings of the rostral, and the short axis of each long hole is adopted. It is better to set the length to 20 mm or less,
For example, Rostor No. 8 in Table 1 is particularly preferred.

As shown in FIG. 5, the heat exchanger 20 charged into the crushing machine 2 is crushed by the rotating hammers 8,..., 8 and the fixed blade 22, and the crushed material 24 is passed through the roaster 14. It is discharged onto the belt conveyor 26. The discharged crushed material 24 is transferred to a magnetic separator 2 by a belt conveyor 26.
8 and is separated into a ferrous component 30 and a non-ferrous component 32 by a magnetic separator 28.

Of the iron 30 and the non-iron 32 selected,
The non-ferrous component 32 is further conveyed to a non-ferrous sorter 36 by a belt conveyor 34, and is separated into copper 38 and aluminum 40 by the non-ferrous sorter 36. As the non-ferrous sorter 36, for example, a known specific gravity sorter that sorts using the specific gravity difference of each material is used, and sorts into each material using wind force while applying vibration to the input crushed material.

When the heat exchanger was crushed by the treatment method according to the present invention comprising the above steps and separated into various materials,
Each of the iron, copper, and aluminum materials had a purity of 95% or more.

In the above embodiment, the heat exchanger of the air conditioner, which is a home electric appliance, has been described. However, the present invention is similarly applied to the same type of heat exchanger employed in a refrigerator such as a showcase. Can be implemented.

[0024]

Since the present invention is configured as described above, it has the following effects. According to the invention according to claim 1 of the present invention, the heat exchanger taken out of the refrigeration apparatus or the home electric appliance is crushed by the crusher until the particle size becomes about 20 mm or less. Processing without reducing the degree of entanglement of iron and non-iron and the degree of entanglement of non-iron can be performed without the need for a fine crushing step. Therefore, the crushed material can be separated into ferrous and non-ferrous components by a magnetic separator, and the separated non-ferrous components can be easily and efficiently separated into copper and aluminum by a non-ferrous separator.

According to the second aspect of the present invention, since a hammer-type crusher is used, if crushed at a particle size suitable for increasing the purity of copper and aluminum, entanglement of iron can be recovered very little. , All materials can be sorted efficiently. Further, the blade used for pulverization is easily chipped and has a short life, whereas the hammer provided in the hammer type crusher has a long life and is easy to maintain.

According to the third aspect of the present invention, since the crushed particle size is set to 5 mm or more, the separation in the subsequent step can be performed efficiently without reducing the processing capacity.

According to the fourth aspect of the present invention, the crushed material is discharged from the crusher through the rostral having a large number of long holes each having a short axis of 20 mm or less.
Uniform and highly separable crushed material can be obtained, and the material can be separated into each material with high accuracy and efficiency.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a process chart showing a method for treating a heat exchanger according to the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a longitudinal sectional view of a crusher for crushing a heat exchanger.

FIG. 3 is a front view of a hammer provided in the crusher of FIG.

FIG. 4 is a development view of a roster provided in the crusher of FIG. 2;

FIG. 5 is a schematic view showing a method for treating a heat exchanger according to the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

 2 Crusher 4 Bearing 6 Main shaft 8 Hammer 10 Pulley 12 Lower frame 14 Rostor 16 Round hole 18 Long hole 20 Heat exchanger 22 Fixed blade 24 Crushed material 26,34 Belt conveyor 28 Magnetic separator 30 Iron 32 Non-iron 36 Non-iron separator 38 Copper 40 Aluminum

Claims (4)

[Claims] Claims: 1. A heat exchanger taken out of a refrigeration unit is crushed by a crusher to a particle size of about 20 mm or less.
A method for treating a heat exchanger in which crushed material is separated into iron and non-ferrous components by a magnetic separator, and the separated non-ferrous components are separated into copper and aluminum by a non-ferrous separator. 2. The method for treating a heat exchanger according to claim 1, wherein a hammer-type crusher is used as the crusher. 3. The method for treating a heat exchanger according to claim 1, wherein the crusher has a crushing particle size of 5 mm or more. 4. The crusher according to claim 1, further comprising a roster having a plurality of long holes each having a minor axis of not more than 20 mm, wherein the crushed material is discharged from said crusher via said roast. The method for treating a heat exchanger according to any one of claims 3 to 7.