Tribocharging of granular plastic mixtures in view of electrostatic separation

The output of any electrostatic separation process is strongly dependent on the effectiveness of particle charging. A novel laboratory-scale fluidized-bed tribocharging device has been described in a previous paper. The aim of this paper is to assess the effectiveness of two materials, aluminum and polypropylene (PP), that could be employed in the tribocharging chamber of that device. The electrostatic separation experiments designed for this purpose were carried out on three samples of a granular polyethylene/polyvinyl chloride mixture, characterized by different compositions. Aluminum and PP were found to be equally effective for the triboelectrostatic separation of the 50% PVC 50% PE sample. For the other two samples (10% PVC 90% PE, 90% PVC 10% PE), the best results were obtained with the PP tribocharging chamber.