You probably don’t think twice when you set your recycling on the curb in the morning. While you head to work for the day, an enormous truck comes by and devours the plastic bottles and soup cans. The truck then takes these materials to a recycling center, a location often hidden somewhere on the outskirts of town.  But what happens after that? If you’ve never visited, a recycling center is actually a high-tech operation that relies heavily on magnetic fields to turn your used materials into future goods. Sorting With Magnets: A Modern Marvel Today’s most advanced recycling centers use a single-stream operation system. Once the trucks arrive at the recycling center, they dump their contents onto the floor. Afterwards, the material is pushed into drums which evenly distribute them onto a single conveyor belt. As the mix of plastic, metal, and glass moves down the line, it passes under an enormous magnet that attracts any items containing iron, including those made from tin or steel. Believe it or not, this typically accounts for only 4% of the recyclable material. These materials are removed from the belt and passed along for further processing. Magnetism is also used to capture and separate aluminum. A magnetic charge is sent through the aluminum, and when this interacts with the operation’s own magnetic field, the aluminum is guided off the main conveyor belt onto its own in a process called Eddy Current Separation. In some recycling centers, the current will cause the aluminum to levitate as other items, like pieces of plastic, drop off the conveyor belt. From here, the aluminum will continue its journey to be transformed into new goods. Using magnets to ensure metals aren’t mixed is crucial in the recycling process. For example, aluminum panels can’t enter the recycling process with steel screws still inside. The mixture of these metals will cause technical issues when they’re boiled down and passed through recycling machines. Magnets also alert recycling centers when two different metals have been mixed, giving the professionals a chance to separate them.   Cranes: Combining Electromagnets and Rare Earth Magnets To move bigger recyclable objects, like car engines, recycling centers will often use enormous electromagnetic cranes. These electromagnets are typically made from conductive copper or aluminum wires coiled many times around an iron core. When electricity passes through the wires, the iron core becomes magnetic. By coiling these wires very densely, the strength of the magnetic field grows even stronger. To drop heavy loads, the electricity can be reduced or even shut off, which will terminate the magnetic field generated. The fact that the field can be so easily terminated is also a hazard, however. If the crane suddenly loses power, the entire load could drop onto bystanders or other equipment. Harness the Same Power with Apex Magnets Recycling centers rely on rare earth magnets, and so can you! Apex Magnets offers incredibly strong neodymium and samarium cobalt magnets to meet all of your needs. Not sure what your business requires? Contact our team, and we’ll help you find exactly the right product for your project.