Scrap Metal Recycling

Scrap Metal Blacktown is here to help the community by providing the opportunity to bring your unused metal items to the right place for recycling.

Metals can be recycled repeatedly without altering their properties. Steel is the most recycled material on the planet. The other highly recycled metals include aluminium, copper, silver, brass, and gold.

Unfortunately, these materials often end up in the garbage due to the lack of knowledge and sources for metal recycling.

Why Do We Recycle Metals?

Metals are valuable materials that can be recycled multiple times without degrading their properties or quality. Scrap metal has value, which motivates people to collect it for sale to recycling companies. In addition to a financial incentive, there is also an environmental obligation.

In a landfill, many metals can take a long time to break down into elements small enough to return to the earth- hundreds, if not thousands of years of taking up space. Some metals like lead and mercury are hazardous and will leach into the surrounding soil and water over time, and should be disposed of safely instead.

Recycling of metals also enables the preservation of natural resources while also requiring less energy to process compared to the manufacture of new products using virgin raw materials. Recycling also emits less carbon dioxide and other harmful gases as compared to when metals are mined from their ores.

Financially, recycling saves money and allows manufacturing businesses to cut down on their production costs. Recycling also creates jobs. For all these reasons and more, keeping such items out of landfills by bringing them to Scrap Metal Blacktown reduces waste in important ways.

At Scrap Metal Blacktown want to help the community by recycling their scrap metal. We love what we do, where we not only do dispose of your scrap metal in a viable manner but also benefit the environment.

A Few Metal Recycling Facts:

Recycling one ton of Tin saves 99% of the energy required for the primary production of tin.
Metal is 100% recyclable and can be recycled over and over again without losing its core characteristics. Recycling of scrap metal contributes to the circular economy helps in avoiding landfills, and saves precious land which could be used for much better purposes.
50% of lead has been used before in other products. Using secondary lead instead of its ore reduces CO2 emissions by an astonishing 99%.

Almost 40% of the world’s demand for copper is met using recycled material. By recycling copper instead of extracting it from mined copper ore, carbon dioxide emissions get reduced by up to 65%.

Currently, the single most recycled container in the world is the aluminium can. Recycling a single aluminium can save enough energy to power a 100-watt light bulb for nearly four hours.

Types of Metals Recycled:

At Scrap Metal Blacktown, we deal in both ferrous and non-ferrous metals. Ferrous metals are combinations of iron and carbon. Some common ferrous metals include carbon steel, alloy steel, wrought iron, and cast iron. On the other hand, non-ferrous metals include aluminium, copper, lead, zinc, and tin. Non-ferrous metals are more precious.

An Overview of The Process of Scrap Metal Recycling:

The main stages of the metal recycling process that we follow at Scrap Metal Blacktown are as follows:

Collection:
The collection process for metals differs from the process for other materials because of higher scrap value. As such, it is more likely to be sold to scrap yards than sent to the landfill. Other sources include large steel structures, railroad tracks, ships, farm equipment, and consumer scrap.

Sorting:
Sorting involves separating metals from mixed scrap metal. Separating ferrous metals from non-ferrous metals is one of the most important steps in the sorting process. As ferrous metals contain iron, we easily pull them out by attracting them with magnets and pull them out of the mixed waste stream. We, at Scrap Metal Blacktown, have cranes fitted with an electromagnet that can remove larger pieces of ferrous scrap. When sorting metals from a mixed stream of recyclable material, we remove the paper first, leaving only plastics and metals. After which, we induce electric currents across the stream where only metals get affected. This process is called eddy current separation. Although aluminium is not magnetic, this technology can levitate it and allow plastics to drop out of the process.

Processing:
To allow further processing, metals are shredded. Shredding is done to promote the melting process as small shredded metals have a large surface-to-volume ratio. As a result, they can be melted using comparatively less energy. Aluminium is converted into small sheets, and steel is changed into steel blocks.

Melting:
We at Scrap Metal Blacktown then melt scrap metal in a large furnace. Each metal is taken to a specific furnace designed to melt that particular metal. A considerable amount of energy is used in this step. However, the energy required to melt and recycle metals is much less than the energy that is needed to produce metals using virgin raw materials. Based on the size of the furnace, the degree of heat of the furnace, and the volume of metal, melting can take from just a few minutes to several hours.

Purification:
Purification is done to ensure the final product is of high quality and free of contaminants. The method used for purification is Electrolysis.

Solidifying:
After purification, melted metals are carried by the conveyor belt to cool and solidify the metals. In this stage, scrap metals are formed into specific shapes such as bars that can be easily used for the production of many products.

Transportation of the Metal Bars:
Once the metals are cooled and solidified, they are ready to use. They are then transported to various factories where they are used as raw material for the production of brand-new products.

When the products made of these metal bars come to the end of their useful life, the metal recycling process begins again.

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