LAUSR

The amount of plastic-containing materials, such as shredder residue material, which is generated after the processing of electronic equipment waste, is increasing. One interesting option for the sustainable management of these materials, instead of incineration or landfilling, is recycling through injection in a bath smelting process, such as zinc fuming. In this way, the plastic material could partially substitute coal as a reductant in the process. In such processes, shredder residue material is injected alongside air into the furnace at temperatures up to 1250 °C. Once the material is injected, it undergoes several conversion steps, including ignition, devolatilization, and char oxidation. In this study, the conversions of shredder residue material and other pure plastic materials were investigated using a drop tube furnace and an optical single-particle burner. The effect of particle size on the conversion time of each material was studied. The conversion time of the particles increases as the particle size increases, although the relationship is not linear. The results indicate that plastic materials with a particle size range of 1–7 mm have a considerably longer conversion time than that of coal used in the conventional processes.