Improvements of the Recovery Line of Waste Toner Cartridges on Environmental and Safety Performances

A physical recovery line had been constructed in plant for the increasing waste toner cartridges in previous work. However, with the production, severe lacks of the line emerged: (1) there was little proper technology of treating the collected toner; (2) strong noise was produced from the line and influenced the health of worker. For disposing toner properly, a new collected system of toner was developed. An air current separator (ACS) was designed to separate organic materials from inorganic materials of toner. Then, the separated organic materials can be incinerated and the inorganic materials can be dumped. Movement behaviors of toner particles in the ACS were analyzed, and the optimized operation parameter (13.5 m/s) of air current speed was obtained by theory analysis and experiments. For controlling the noise, noise levels emitted from the different process of the line were measured. The results indicated noise levels emitted from crusher (95.2 dB(A)) and agitator/magnetic separator (AMS, 91.9 dB(A)) were greater than the permissible noise exposure level of the Occupational Safety and Health Standards (90 dB(A)). The noise levels of other processes of the line were relatively safe. An acoustic hood was developed to reduce the noise levels of the crusher and the AMS. Then, the noise levels were both decreased to 67.6 dB(A). This paper provided important data for the environment on the industrialization of waste toner cartridges recovery.