Maria Holuszko
University of British Columbia, Canada
Title: High voltage pulse fragmentation for metal liberation from waste LED lamps
Biography
Biography: Maria Holuszko
Abstract
Lighting products are the most commonly used electrical products around the globe. With the improvement in lamp technologies, lighting products have grown complex. These lamps consist of various valuable metals, non-metals and traces of hazardous substances. A major step in the metal recovery process is size reduction. SELFRAG is a high voltage selective fragmentation comminution technology that uses high voltage pulses to efficiently separate the metals at coarse size as the breakage occurs along the interface/boundary thus enhancing selective comminution. Since the process utilizes a water medium, the loss of fines would be minimized and the liberation occurring at a coarser size should improve the recovery in the subsequent processes. This research looked into the applicability of high voltage pulse fragmentation for light emitting diodes (LED) lamps. Eight different types of LED lamps were processed through the SELFRAG unit at varying pulses to study metal liberation. The product obtained was characterized for metal liberation, metal grades, and liberation analysis. The specific energy consumption for this size reduction process was also monitored. The results showed that the high voltage can liberate metal at the coarser fraction without generating too much fine. With the increase in input energy, the degree of liberation for various components increased for the coarsest size fraction. On the other hand, LED lamps with metallic casing were not affected by the high voltage and hence no breakage was observed. At the same time, the energy is very high compared to the conventional crushing and grinding technology used in the mining industry.