THE NEW LIFE OF RECYCLED ALUMINIUM

THE NEW LIFE OF RECYCLED ALUMINIUM, THANKS TO CENTRO ROTTAMI, INDINVEST AND TOMRA RECYCLING SORTING EQUIPMENT

Italy is the first country in Europe in terms of recycled aluminium production, with a recovery rate close to 70%. In the Italian province of Latina, a scrap recycling company is supplying recycled aluminium to a nearby smelter to produce environmentally friendly ingots with 85% recycled aluminium. Without a doubt, this is a great example of how to create a quality finished product with low energy consumption and less pollution.

Centro Rottami, a company from the Italian town of Cisterna di Latina, founded in 1985, has been recycling aluminium scrap for 10 years. Gennaro del Prete, technical director of the factory, tells about its beginnings, which started with just a scrap mill. “Five years later, we decided to specialise in aluminium refining, a specialisation made possible by Tomra technology,” he adds.

The Italian plant processes about 1,500 tons of aluminum and another 1,000 tons of ferrous scrap per month. The aluminium they receive comes mainly from already used window frames. This product contains certain contaminants, such as plastic and rubber, as well as metals other than aluminum, such as copper, brass, zinc and steel, which must be removed to produce pure aluminum fractions.

The company, which has been working with Tomra for 12 years, currently has 3 Tomra Finder units and 3 Tomra x-Tract X-Ray machines. Once crushed and pre-sorted by both magnets and Foucault separators, the incoming material follows two lines. The material rejected by the Foucault separator is processed by a finder unit which recovers metals such as stainless steel. Advanced technologies such as Deep Data and Z-Tect enable the finder to detect objects with high accuracy, increase efficiency and achieve exceptional levels of purity, giving added value as well as greater ease of sale.

In turn, the 3 Tomra x-Tract units purify the aluminium expelled by the Foucault separator. Thanks to advanced X-ray transmission technology, the X-TRACT detects the contaminants present and classifies them according to their atomic density. The shredded aluminium is thus free of heavy metals such as copper, brass and crankcase aluminium with sensational precision and reliability in a dry process with low energy consumption and at the same time offering high production capacity.

Del Prete recalls that “in 2019 we bought 2 more Tomra X-Tract units because the aluminium market demanded higher and higher quantities and quality. Then, we combine the 3 machines into one line. We also made this decision to take advantage of synergies with Indinvest, the aluminium smelter we had nearby”.

Indinvest LT is a very important company in the production and extrusion of aluminium profiles used in a wide range of sectors. He has developed his own casting recipes to create these alloys, using a mixture of three materials: primary aluminium, internal post-production scrap and post-consumer scrap supplied by Centro Rottami. By mixing it all together, you get the reference alloy for ingot production. The higher the quality of the scrap, the less raw material extracted from bauxite is used.

This collaboration has made it possible to produce high quality, environmentally friendly aluminium. “Two years ago, we created an ingot called Creal. It is 85% post-consumer aluminium. It offers mechanical performance and, above all, a surface comparable to that of primary aluminium, created by aluminium manufacturers from bauxite,” Antichi points out.

Antichi concludes by stating that in recent years they have found that their recycled aluminium has a great acceptance in the market and its demand is increasing. “Now, especially as the Paris 2030 Agreement imposes a reduction in CO2 consumption, customers are opting for the production of profiles from recycled material.”