non-ferrous metals (non ferrous metals)

Non-ferrous metals are metals that contain little or no iron and are therefore non-magnetic. In e-waste the category spans the base non-ferrous metals — copper (wiring, windings, busbars, PCB traces), aluminium (heat sinks, casings, capacitor cans), zinc, tin, lead and nickel — and the precious and platinum-group metals (gold, silver, palladium, platinum) concentrated in circuit boards, connectors and contacts. Although non-ferrous metals are usually a smaller fraction of e-waste by weight than ferrous steel, they carry the overwhelming majority of its recoverable value: a tonne of mixed PCBs can contain hundreds of grams of gold and several kilograms of copper.

Because they are not magnetic, non-ferrous metals cannot be pulled out by a simple magnet — they require different physics. The workhorse is the eddy-current separator, which uses a rapidly rotating magnetic rotor to induce eddy currents in conductive non-ferrous fragments and physically repel them off the conveyor, cleanly ejecting aluminium and copper from a non-magnetic residue. Density (sink-float) separation, air classification and sensor-based sorting (XRT, induction sorting) then split the non-ferrous mix into individual metals. Copper wire is often recovered separately by granulation and density/electrostatic separation of the chopped cable.

The price gap is the whole point. Indian copper scrap trades on the order of Rs 600–850 per kg and aluminium scrap around Rs 130–200 per kg — ten to thirty times ferrous steel — while contained gold and palladium are worth lakhs to crores per kg. Non-ferrous recovery is therefore where an e-waste line earns its margin, and grade discipline matters: clean, single-metal fractions (bright copper, separated aluminium) fetch far more than mixed “irony” or contaminated scrap, and PCBs are best routed whole to a refiner rather than crudely crushed.

For an Indian recycler, the practical strategy is to protect and concentrate the non-ferrous value. Strip copper windings and cable out of ferrous assemblies before they go to the magnet; recover copper cable by mechanical granulation, never by burning (open cable burning is illegal under the E-Waste Rules and a serious dioxin and copper-grade-loss problem); hand-pick connectors and gold-bearing parts; and send PCB and precious-metal concentrate to an authorised refiner or, under CPCB export authorisation, to an overseas smelter that settles on assayed metal content. The non-ferrous fraction is small in tonnage but is effectively the entire profit of the operation.