Recycling of electric appliances

The plant has a line for each type of appliances-refrigerators, air conditioners, washing machines and television sets. These lines are composed of a preprocess for manual disassembly and a postprocess to crush and separate materials using machinery and equipment.

Line for refrigerators

Then, the refrigerators are placed on a scale, one by one, to measure the weight.
The weight of each unit of other three home electric appliances is also measured in the same way.
In the same instance, information of the electric appliance recycling ticket is scanned using the bar-code reader to identify each appliance.
Here, as you can see, refrigerant CFCs are recovered from the refrigerator.
Since, the type of CFCs to be recovered has been confirmed in advance using the information on the seal, CFCs are stored in a different cylinder according to the kind.
Then, the compressor is removed from the refrigerator body.
A hole is made on the compressor to recover remaining refrigerant oil.
Now, recovered compressors are reproduced as a recyclable resource.
The body from which the compressor has been removed is placed on a lift and put into a crusher that can be used commonly for various appliances.

Some of recovered CFCs are used to reproduce raw materials for fluorocarbon resin.
The outdoor unit, then, is carried to the work station where it is manually disassembled.
The cover is removed and both the condenser and the heat exchanger are removed.
Just like refrigerators, the compressor is removed from the air conditioner to recover refrigerant oil.
The remaining body is put in a chute system to go to the crusher.
As for the indoor unit, after the heat exchanger is removed, the remaining body is sent to the crusher, too.

Removed next is the stainless-steel tub. And, salt water used to keep the balance of rotating tub is recovered as well.
In the next step, the operation panel is manually disassembled and the remaining body goes to the crusher.
The washing machine body goes on a conveyor belt shared with air conditioner bodies and be sent to the crusher.

The television set is placed so that the viewing surface looks downward. And, the backside cabinet is removed.

Components are all removed by hand, including speakers, circuit boards, cables and deflecting yokes.
Next and lastly, Braun tubes are removed manually to be sent to a later process.
After removing the Braun tube, the set body is sent to the television set body crusher on a conveyor belt.
The television set body is crushed here to recover plastic chips.
Meanwhile, from the Braun tube, the neck part installed with the electron gun and the explosion-proof band are removed. Then, adhesive tape is removed using brushing equipment and seals affixed on the funnel part are stripped off as well.
Later, heating wire is wound around the Braun tube to cause distortions on the glass by applying heat, so that panel glass and funnel glass can be separated.
From inside the disassembled Braun tube, the aperture grill is recovered and vapor deposited aluminum is taken off from panel glass.
In order to reuse them as materials for Braun tubes, both panel glass and funnel glass are recovered, respectively.