How do you design a process to physically separate polymers, aluminium alloys etc?

How do you design a process to physically separate polymers, aluminium alloys, mangesium alloys, steel, paper and cardboard materials at a recycling plant

How do you design a process to physically separate polymers, aluminium alloys etc?
That is going to require a great deal of cleverness, I'm afraid. It's hard. Poeple do it all over the whole country, and you know what? Most of them are sorting by hand. Visit your local recycling center and ask for a tour. They'll show you how they do it.





The only easy part is the steel. You can pick that out of the mix with a magnet. The rest is really hard to deal with. You almost have to shred it to get any kind of consistency, and then the differences in properties that could be useful (like density) are pretty small.