The present invention relates to a machine for triturating (shredding) composite materials, particularly for triturating solid urban waste.
It is known that one of the main problems arising in the disposal of solid urban waste is constituted by the large volume occupied by this waste with respect to its weight, with severe consequences as far as the cost of transferring it to the collection site where the waste of many users is gathered is concerned.
This problem has been partially solved by adopting compactor trucks, that is to say, trucks which are provided with devices for pressing the loaded waste and can accordingly load a larger mass of waste.
This result might be further improved if the waste were shredded before being compacted, since compaction would certainly be more effective on the shredded material.
However, adoption of shredders for this application is very limited, since solid urban waste is a highly composite mixture that can include very hard materials together with materials that would entail no problems in shredding.
The main problem in the use of conventional shredders is the need to pre-sort the materials to be shredded.
The various types of shredder that are currently commercially available are in fact sized to grind materials whose hardness lies within a preset range, above which the shredder jams or suffers even severe damage.
Accordingly, various types of shredder with various sizes and power ratings, set according to the material to be shredded, are commercially available.
If one wishes to shred a wide range of materials, it is necessary to use extremely powerful, sturdy, and bulky machines, since these machines must match the hardest material to be broken up. The problem worsens whenever the materials to be processed include exceptionally hard materials, such as for example metals, as is indeed the case of solid urban waste.
This problem has so far prevented the provision of effective shredding machines for processing solid urban waste having modest power levels and dimensions.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds