Abstract
The aim of the research presented in this article was to investigate separation performance of the air table when separating a binary mixture of plastics. Separation using the air table, i.e. a dry mechanical process that grades constituents of the mixture with differences in specific gravity, is employed for separation of the PVC/PP mixture. Moreover, the performance of the laboratory-scale air table is improved by increasing the height of riffles laid on the porous deck. The separation tests in a laboratory-scale air table showed that the total efficiency of the separation is mainly dependent on superficial velocity of the air, longitudinal vibrating frequency of the deck, end slope, side slope, and height of riffles. The respective influence of these variables upon the total efficiency of separation is demonstrated experimentally. The evaluations of the separation performance for the two-component mixture are made in terms of grade [%], recovery [%] and total efficiency [%].