Group 8, Section 009

David Wagner, Michelle Rusek,

Min Liu, Matt Ceonzo

THE STEEL SAVER

Requirements

The first requirement is to not adversely affect steel quality, and the second is to utilize the alloys in the recycled steel to reduce the use and costs of new alloying elements.

Goals

Design a process to effectively recycle Advanced High Strength (high alloy) Steel from the automotive market back into the basic oxygen furnace (BOF) steel production cycle. The first requirement is to not adversely affect steel quality, and the second is to utilize the alloys in the recycled steel to reduce the use and costs of new alloying elements.

Goals & Requirements

Disassembly(High or Low

Carbon)

Car Parts are Crushed

Large Fan (Light

Particles)

Magnetic Separation

Eddy Currents

Dense Media Separation

Finished Product

Basic Oxygen Furnace

The same process will be used on both high-carbon and low-carbon steel scraps. However, they will occur separately.

Whole Car

Disassembled Manually

Separated (High/Low Carbon)

Some car parts are high carbon steel and others are low carbon steel.

• High carbon (AHSS)- Shafts- Gears- Suspension- Steering

Column- Transmission- Springs• Low carbon (LCAK)

- Frame- Exhaust system- Door panels (body)

• After the car is disassembled and sorted into high and low carbon steel the parts need to be crushed into small pieces.

• A giant rolling drum crushes the scrap steel until it is in small, workable scraps of metal.

Car Parts are Crushed and Cut

• After the parts are crushed into small pieces, the scraps run on a conveyer belt under a large fan.

• This fan sucks up any lightweight materials (plastics, upholstery, foam etc.) away from the metal scraps.

Light Particle Removal

• By using a revolving electromagnetic drum, we are able to sort out any non-magnetic material from the magnetic scrap metal.

• The drum is magnetized to pick up all the magnetic material (steel, iron, and nickel) and then demagnetized allowing the magnetic material to drop onto another conveyer belt. This leaves all non-magnetic material behind.

Magnetic Separation

• Eddy Currents remove all non-ferrous metals that may have gotten up to this step in the steel recycling process.

• Can sort out non-ferrous metals and also inert materials (non-conductive) via spinning a polar wheel and inducing a magnetic field that expunges all materials that are non conductive from the rest of the process.

Eddy Currents

• The scrap metals deposit into a large drum containing a liquid of a specific density. The density of the liquid allows the steel to float while all other metallic material will sink to the bottom

• The drums are then poured carefully over a strainer to salvage the steel scrap. The liquid can be recycled after the drum is drained and the waste metallic materials are discarded.

Dense Media Separation

• Now that the steel has been separated from any other waste materials (plastics, other metals) it can be weighed out and added to the BOF.

• The use of different alloyed steels allows for cost savings by already containing some alloys of the final steel heat.

Addition to the Basic Oxygen Furnace

Thank you!

Questions?