Throwing an old copper pipe in the bed of your truck, loading up a rusted cast iron radiator, or scraping together a load of aluminum siding isn’t complicated. You dump your scrap at the scale, pay your fellow man some cash, and leave. But what happens after you unload has far-reaching impacts that most enthusiasts never consider.
Until now.
Learning the journey that scrap metal takes to get from your truck to global manufacturing centers helps you receive top dollar for your material and understand how metal recycling feeds the planet we live on. From there, you can watch in awe as your unwanted materials are converted into fresh industrial material stock.
Metals can be infinitely recycled without losing their structural integrity. So where does it all go once it leaves your truck? Here’s the industrial journey every scrap-metal item undergoes, step by step.
How Does Sorting Scrapped Metal Work?
Humans and machinery sort scrap metal at recycling centers using intrinsic physical qualities like magnetism to quickly sort massive piles of scrap into either ferrous or non-ferrous material.
As soon as your scrap hits the ground in a yard, it is rapidly sorted and divided by crews and machinery operators. In fact, the first primary division among all metal material happens right when ferrous metal is separated from non-ferrous metal.
What’s the difference? Ferrous metal contains iron. Non-ferrous metal does not.
Large-scale industrial yards use industrial crane bells with integrated electromagnets to quickly sort through junk. The electromagnet glides over piles of metal scrap and instantly whisks away any steel rebar fragments, iron piping, or even car bodies, hoisting them into assigned storage containers.
All non-magnetic material falls to the ground or rolls down a conveyor belt and into sorting bins. Depending on the size of your load and metal content, humans or high-tech sensors like eddy current separators complete final sorting. Eddy current separators create magnetic fields that physically push non-ferrous metals away from non-metal debris.
Forcing Scrap Metal into Liquid Form
Scrap metal will never experience higher levels of stress than during hydraulic shearing, shredding, and baling. Put simply, scrapyards prepare materials for transport with powerful hydraulic shears and shredders before baling everything into dense cubes.
Metal is heavy, cumbersome, and expensive to transport without being compressed. To transport tons of scrap metal to nearby mills or shipping ports overseas, yards need to condense the amount of physical space the metal takes up.
It takes three steps to process and condense scrap metal.
- Heavy Duty Hydraulic Shears: Large hydraulic shears slice through everything from lengthy steel beams and pipe networks to shredded car bodies like literal paper. The goal is to break down all steel-based scrap into pieces less than three feet long.
- Industrial Crushers: Entire vehicles, appliances, and chunks of sheet metal are tossed into powerful hammermill shredders. These spinning-metal monsters rip through your scrap with ultrahigh-speed manganese hammers designed to cut metal into fist-sized pieces.
- Hydraulic Balers: Last but certainly not least, lightweight metals like aluminum siding, copper wire, thin gauge sheet metal, and more are fed into industrial-sized balers. Hydraulically powered rams descend from above and compress the lightweight scrap into manageable cubes called bales.
Pro Tip: Take time to sort your scrap before coming to the scrap yard. Not only does this save you time after you dump and weigh your load, but it also ensures high-dollar non-ferrous metal isn’t weighed with your bundled iron and priced as scrap.
Smelting and Casting Recycled Metal
Once your scrap metal is baled or shredded, it’s loaded onto massive trucks or shipped by railcar to steel mills and foundries that specialize in melting scrap down to a usable liquid form.
Steel mills and foundries don’t waste time processing raw iron from scratch. Instead, massive Electric Arc Furnaces blast scraps with high-voltage electrical currents until the internal temperature of the furnace exceeds 3,000°F. Dump truck after dump truck filled with shredded metal scrap is emptied into the hungry furnace.
As the metal begins to melt, technicians add chemical purifiers that bind to trace amounts of paint, hydrocarbons, and impurities to create a slag layer that floats on top of the liquid metal.
Spectrometers also read sample droplets every few minutes to ensure the batch has been refined to the correct metallurgical standards. If your load was charged into an induction furnace bound for copper wire production, technicians will add trace amounts of nickel, carbon, or chromium to create the desired alloy.
Need more details? Take a look at the scrap processing methods for pure copper vs. steel below.
| Metal Type | Primary Processing Method | Furnace Type Used | Final Recycled Output |
| Ferrous Steel | Heavy shredding / Hydraulic Shearing | Electric Arc Furnace ( EAF ) | Rebar, I-Beams, Sheet Metal |
| Copper & Brass | Baling / Granulation | Induction Furnace | Wire Rods, Tubing, Plumbing Stock |
| Aluminum | Baling / Shredding | Reverberatory Furnace | Automotive Castings, Aluminum Ingot |
Products Created from Recycled Metal
Recycled metal is first cast into either billets, slabs, or ingots. Next, manufacturers mold those primary shapes into usable products.
Liquid metal is tapped from the furnace and poured into continuous casting molds once it reaches quality standards. The freshly melted metal cools while traveling through copper molds, standardized mill shapes are created.
The most common types of finished metal “billets” you should be aware of include:
- Billets: These are long, square metal bars that become rebars, wire stock, and seamless tubing after heat rolling.
- Slabs: You’ve seen slab steel before! Aside from I-beams, large steel rectangles with kerf cuts melted down at scrapyards are transformed into flat sheet metal.
- Ingots: Large blocks of aluminum, copper, or brass that can be melted down and cast into usable parts at your local foundry.
Sheet metal ends up in car bodies and new appliances, copper wire is privatized for electrical contractors, and ingots are fed into industrial furnaces to create specialized metal products, parts, or tools.
Your Scrap Metal Traveling the World
By now, you’re probably wondering… “ Where does my scrap truck go once I sell it off?” Or maybe, “Will I ever use the stuff I’m bringing to the scrap yard?”
The answer? It’s entirely possible.
Aluminum ingots could already be getting turned into new boat hulls. Meanwhile, that copper wire you sold is effectively funding global coalitions to bring electricity to impoverished nations.
Quick Quiz
How much energy does recycling copper save compared to mining new copper ore from the ground?
- 20%
- 50%
- 85%
- 95%
Answer: C! Recycling copper saves up to 85% of the energy required to mine and refine copper ore from the ground.
Why Should I Care About Recycling Scrap Metal?
Metal recycling keeps critical non-renewable resources out of our landfills, drastically reduces energy requirements for producing metal, and pays you money today.
Steel recycling alone saves over 2,500 lbs. of iron ore, 1,400 lbs. of coal, and 120 pounds of limestone per every ton of steel recycled. As we briefly touched on earlier, metals can be recycled infinitely without losing strength, durability, or purity.
Sell more scrap. Make more money. Keep metals out of the landfill where they belong.
Partner with Action Metals | Bring Your Junk to Us!
Action Metals has spent years simplifying the scrap metal experience for DIYers and professional crews alike. We want you to understand exactly why you’re getting paid the amounts you’re getting paid and what happens if you fail to divide your scrap before arriving at our bins. Explore metals we purchase, learn about our our services, review our facility & equipment, or contact us today for more details.
FAQ
Q: What is the difference between ferrous vs. non-ferrous metal?
A: Ferrous metals contain iron. Things like steel and cast iron are very heavy and magnetic. All non-ferrous metals do not contain iron, making them non-magnetic. Copper, brass, and aluminum are considered high-value non-ferrous metals.
Q: Do I have to clean all my scrap metal before bringing it to you guys?
A: No, but stripping copper wire of its insulation, removing plastic caps on aluminum cans, or tearing zip ties off of scrap metal can greatly increase your per-pound payout because there is less work for us to do.
Q: How does your yard determine what price to pay for my scrap metal?
A: Our prices are based on a couple of different factors. We pay according to real-time commodity market rates around the world, the weight of your material, and its purity. Finally, we decide if your material needs to be sorted further or put through our shearing machines.
