Recycling cartridge fuses

It appears to be economically feasible to process complete (disconnected) cartridges without any pre-processing in the converter of a copper furnace.

Fuses are and continue to be an inexpensive and safe method of protection, for most applications, and still have unrivalled qualities. The main types of fuses in use in the Netherlands are miniature fuses for devices, screw-in fuses for house installations, fuse links for industrial installations and cylinder cartridges for medium-volt installations. For the time being, only fuse links and medium-volt cartridges are suitable for reuse.

Important elements for reuse are the metals present: copper and silver. The percentages of copper (8-25%) and silver (0.1-0.3%) are high enough to be interesting for reuse.

Disassembling such cartridges is an extremely laborious process and the costs are many times higher than the proceeds from the raw materials. However, it appears to be economically feasible to process complete (disconnected) cartridges without any pre-processing in the converter of a copper furnace. Normally, quartz sand has to be added during copper smelting because slagging is necessary for the recovery of metals. Since 20% to 30% of cartridges already consist of quartz sand, adding these during processing is useful. The small percentage of plastic they contain is also advantageous due to the heat this produces during degradation.

 

example of the composition of the fuses

For direct processing in a copper converter in Germany, the cartridges must comply with the following specifications:

  • Plastic components no more than 3.5%
  • Asbestos less than 0.05%
  • Cadmium less than 0.005%

These and other residues are bonded in the slag that remains after processing. This slag is formed from the residues of the ceramic cases and the quartz sand and it is reused in road construction. That way, all residual materials are also processed in an environmentally friendly way and rendered harmless so that they will pose no threat in the future.