Copper Out of Aluminum Coil, Radiator or Whole Unit
HVAC recycling systems have one job that decides everything else: sorting the copper away from the aluminum cleanly. ERS designs and builds turnkey lines that recover both metals from coils, radiators and complete air-conditioning units, sized around the material a plant actually receives rather than around a standard flowsheet.
Why HVAC Scrap Is Awkward
A finned coil is copper tube bonded into aluminum fin, pressed together deliberately so it transfers heat. That is exactly what makes it hard to take apart. Layered radiators add solder and steel. Whole air-conditioning units bring plastic, insulation, a compressor and refrigerant lines on top.
Shred it too coarsely and the metals stay locked together, so the fraction sells as mixed. Shred it too hard and you make fines, and fines are where copper is lost. Liberation is the whole game, and it is the stage most often undersized.
What Comes Off Before the Line
Whole units do not go straight into a shredder. Refrigerant has to be recovered first, which is a legal requirement in the United States and happens upstream of anything ERS supplies. Compressor oil is drained, and depending on the unit, the compressor itself is usually pulled and routed to meatball and armature processing rather than through the coil line.
Getting that sequence right protects the whole installation. Oil through a shredder contaminates every fraction downstream of it, and a compressor case through a mill is how screens get wrecked. The dismantling step is part of the system design, not a separate problem for the yard to solve.
Built Around What You Receive
Operations differ. Some take copper-rich coils from service companies, some take aluminum-dominant radiators, some take whole units off a dismantling floor. ERS engineers the sorting stages around that mix, and around the throughput and floor plan the line has to work in.
Systems are modular and scalable, so a line built for coils today can take radiators later without being replaced. That matters in a market where the incoming mix changes with whatever the local trade is scrapping.
What the Line Does
Material is opened by pre-shredding or shearing, then reduced through shredders and mills — hammer mills and turbo mills where the material needs them — until the copper is liberated from the aluminum. The sorting then runs in stages: magnetic separation pulls the steel, eddy current and density separation tables sort the non-ferrous fractions apart, and advanced material separation handles the difficult middlings.
Conveying and pneumatic transport move material between stages, dust collection is designed into the line rather than added afterwards, and baling at the end turns the recovered fractions into a product a buyer will price properly.
Where the Money Is
A clean copper fraction and a clean aluminum fraction sell as two metals at two prices. A mixed fraction sells as one, on somebody else's assessment of what is in it. The difference across a year of throughput is usually larger than the cost of the sorting stage that would have produced it.
The second number is what goes out in the fines. Most operations have no figure for it, which is why it is the easiest loss in the plant to keep paying for.
Related Streams
HVAC sits next to several streams ERS builds for. ACR chopping handles aluminum and copper radiators as a dedicated line, and copper wire and cable covers the harness and connection material that comes with whole units. Everything sits under metals processing and scrap metal recycling systems.
Prove It On Your Own Material First
Recovery figures on paper are a starting point, not an answer. The ERS Test Facility in Atlanta exists so you never have to take one on trust. Send a drum of your actual coils or radiators and we will run them through an ERS process flow, then show you the recovery, the purity and the throughput you can expect, with the output fractions in front of you.
That test is where most designs get refined, because real material almost always behaves differently from the way it was described on a phone call.
Support After Commissioning
An HVAC line is worth what it does in year five. ERS keeps a stocked warehouse and supports every installation it builds, from commissioning through to spare parts and service. Hammers, screens, blades and separation components are available without a lead time measured in months. Installed systems are written up under project news and system updates.
Next Steps for Your HVAC Recycling System
If you are evaluating HVAC recycling systems, send your incoming mix, your target throughput and your floor plan through the contact form. Better still, send a sample and we will run it.