Concept for a workbench for recycling home appliances - Version 1.1
The idea is to create a workbench with the necessary tools (also electrically powered) for home appliances disposal. The idea is to have everything necessary in order to allow the worker to disassemble and separate all the parts of a particular object or appliance, so that the various materials are correctly divided according to their type in appropriately marked containers aimed at collect the material of that particular type, so that they can then be easily managed in a subsequent recycling phase. Therefore, electrical tools should somehow have compartments for storing them and a connection to the electrical mains, so that they can be used easily either sitting on a chair and using the bench as a support, or standing if you are working to dispose of larger objects (think for example of a dishwasher). Therefore, among the tools, in addition to screwdrivers/unscrewers for various types of screws, there should also be tools for cutting plastic and metals, tools for heating tin, pliers for removing electrical components and so on. In addition to this, the desk should also have a compartment to store the gloves to be used and any chemical products that may be needed (such as those to facilitate the removal of rusty screws, medicines for emergency situations, detergents and perfumes). In addition to this, the workbench must provide a series of containers in which to insert the collected parts, and these containers must be designed so as to be easy to remove and empty if they are full.
Furthermore, in some cases certain tools for cutting metal perhaps need to be specially designed as tools such as the circular disc saw are absolutely not suitable for cutting metal or plastic without damaging it and without producing sparks and therefore must in some way operate cold and have an operating principle more similar to that of a can opener than a grinder.
NOTE: it is not certain that in certain cases some metals should not be separated based on the composition of their metallic alloy, so how certain plastics should not be separated, for example, based on their specific weight. Not being an expert in waste disposal, I can however suggest, in this case, to possibly manage the classification of these materials with an electronic process, after having inserted them into a special compartment, so that a system can catalog them based on their specific weight, their behavior with respect to magnetic fields or other evaluation criteria.
NOTE 2: I remember having given this idea in an extremely basic document to a girl from a town near where I live more than 12 years ago, but having never heard of it again I decided to dust it off.
NOTE 3: for appliances that contain a refrigerant circuit (refrigerators, freezers, air conditioners, heat pumps) this workbench is not sufficient: before any cutting or disassembly operation, the refrigerant gas must be recovered with dedicated equipment by personnel certified according to applicable regulations (in Europe, the F-Gas Regulation and the WEEE directive), because uncontrolled release of these gases is harmful to the environment and in some cases also a safety risk for whoever is working. The workbench described in this document is therefore intended for appliances without a refrigerant circuit (e.g. washing machines, dishwashers, ovens).
Written by : Marco Bagnaresi
Email : contact@mbcraft.it