New machine effectively cleans steel wire from tires

The UNI-CUT SP tire wire cleaner is specifically designed to remove textile and rubber residues from the steel wires contained in tires, leaving recyclers with clean, valuable steel product that is ready for a smelter.  

In order to protect machines in the downstream process stages of tire recycling against excessive wear, it is best to remove wire at the earliest stage possible. During the process of tire recycling, pre-shredding is usually followed by a first granulation stage in which, depending on the configuration of a plant, a granulate of 15 to 30 millimetres in size is created. Directly after granulation, when a high proportion of steel wire is drawn from the flow of material, processors are left with a very unclean fraction. Along with the wires, around 10 to 35 percent (by weight) of the rubber and textiles is also withdrawn. This proportion is too high for use in a steel smelter.   

The UNI-CUT SP tire wire cleaner is designed specifically to deal with this unclean fraction. The machine uses a combination of shear and pressing forces to break up the material compound. The steel cleaner combines the advantages of a low-wear mill with the dynamic properties of a granulator, and the tools mounted on the rotor shaft rub the rubber and steel mixture on the stator shaft of the machine against one another, thus exposing the individual fractions.   

The UNI-CUT SP machine is offered as a complete process solution with feed and extraction conveying as well as connected separation technology. Specially configured vibration channels and magnets separate exposed wire, textile and rubber fractions, and the entire separation plant is encapsulated, which enables exposed textiles to be blown out via air separation devices and captured in a filter. The UNI-CUT SP tire wire cleaner is configured for a throughput of approximately 1 metric tonne per hour. At the end, wire emerges with a purity of greater than 98 percent.