Recycling of Metals

The next time you drain a canned beverage or take a journey in a car, you might like to think about what will happen to it when it reaches the end of its useful life. This teaching and learning package will look at metals recycling from a materials science viewpoint – not simply outlining the need for recycling, but explaining the complex scientific principles behind some aspects of the recycling process itself.

• Aims
• Before you start
• Introduction
• What metals can be recycled?
• Processing before recycling
• Physical sorting – The Eddy current separation method
• Tin can processing
• Copper in motors
• Recycling processes and issues
• Contaminants in aluminium alloys
• The Ellingham diagram in removal of contaminants
• Automobile recycling
• Summary
• Questions
• Going further

Begin

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First created: October 2005. "Going further" updated: January 2008. Update to HTML5: November 2021.