Glass wool recycling with a low-speed crusher

What you see in the video

An ACA crusher processes glass wool insulation. The machine opens and breaks down the material and separates it from wrapping and foil facing. The glass wool comes out as an even, loose fraction, ready for screening and recycling.

Why glass wool is hard to handle

Glass wool is light and bulky. A container fills up long before it reaches its weight limit, so most of what you pay to transport is air.

It also rarely arrives clean. Foil facing, plastic wrapping, nails, steel and wood come with it, especially from demolition and renovation. In an ordinary shredder, light material also tends to bridge: it sits on top of the rotors instead of being pulled in.

How the ACA crusher does it

The crusher turns at 15 RPM with 13,000 Nm of torque. The augers pull even very light material straight into the machine without bridging, and hard-pressed sheets and pipes are broken down without problems.

The glass wool is crushed against itself, and the moving parts never touch each other, which keeps wear low. If a foreign body is too hard to crush, the auger reverses automatically instead of stopping the machine.

You set the output size by adjusting the rotating and fixed knives. Because the output flow is even, it is easier to screen out foil, wrapping and metal afterwards. The low speed also means little dust and a noise level of 75 dB at one metre when running empty.

The hopper is built to fit your loading method, whether that is a digger or a conveyor. The machine is designed for continuous 24/7 operation.

What the clean fraction can be used for

With foreign bodies removed, the glass wool takes up far less space and can be recycled instead of landfilled. Some manufacturers take back clean glass wool for new production. What a receiver will accept depends on their purity requirements and on where the material comes from.

Read more about our glass wool crusher, or see how the same principle works for stone wool and rockwool.

Want to see it with your own material? Send us a description of your glass wool waste, and we’ll tell you how the crusher handles it. Call +45 24 82 25 82 or write to info@acaindustry.com.