On-line recycling of abrasives in abrasive water jet cleaning

This paper reports a method of on-line recycling for abrasives while using abrasive water jet to clean components to be remanufactured. It uses a stirring overflow separator to realize the separation of abrasives and dirt. Abrasives are broken into pieces due to the impact in cleaning process, and the contamination cleaned off mingles with abrasives suspension, all of which seriously influence the cleaning effect. Meanwhile, as new high-tech abrasives (such as ceramic abrasive, silicon carbide abrasive) appear continuously, the proportion of abrasives in wet abrasive blasting cleaning cost is increasing. Thus, it's more important to reuse the abrasives. The recycling of abrasives makes the abrasive water jet cleaning greener, more economical, and more sustainable.