Aluminium recycling is a crucial process when it comes to recycling of metals. To make the metal industry part of a circular economy, this process must be efficient and for the interest of companies it should be economical. Singulation is such a process which does both the tasks.
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Aluminium recycling is a crucial process when it comes to recycling of metals. To make the metal industry part of a circular economy, this process must be efficient and for the interest of companies it should be economical. Singulation is such a process which does both the tasks. In this work, aluminium scrap recycling has been positioned as a commercially beneficially process which encourages companies to take up the process and since the process is environmentally advantageous as well, there has been mentions of how the authorities provide policies which support this process. The first part of the work looks at how and why aluminium is produced which looks into the processes such as Bayer and Hall-Heroult and into multiple uses of the aluminium alloys and also mildly touches upon some of the compatible alloy series. Aluminium is a highly recyclable material so it is interesting to study about what happens one it has reached its End of Life (EOL) stage. Sorting is an essential stage in the recycling of aluminium and there are solutions which encourage sorting based on alloy series which again is economically and ecologically beneficial. And for this to happen efficiently, singulation is essential. Singulation of aluminium is important to achieve better efficiency in the process of recycling which is the aim of companies such as Reukema. Although useful, singulation has many challenges. Since it is a solution which depends on the problem i.e., there is no universal way to singulate every kind of material, the problem here has challenges such as entangling of material, their landing on top of each other are just some of such problems which are looked at here. By simulation, it was found that the arrival pattern of the material follows a homogenously random distribution for smaller size fraction but a highly regularized distribution for large size fractions but smoothens to a homogenously random distribution as we increase the number of particles for both size fractions. The experiments performed after developing a time series were compared to a simulated singulation process and the results were not ideal in terms of singulation since the chute was not included in the process. The experimental setup needed to be optimised which could lead to even better and accurate results. Higher particle speed on the vibrating feeder could have played a crucial role.