Ball mill for milling and screening aluminium dross

Even after hot separation, dross still holds aluminium — granules locked inside lumps of oxide. The ball mill closes the processing chain: a rotating drum with iron balls breaks up and grinds the cooled dross, and the screening section splits the output into three size fractions — coarse, middle and fine. Coarse and middle fractions are metallic aluminium that goes straight back into your melting furnace; the fine fraction is mostly oxides — a uniform, classified material that is far easier to sell or dispose of than raw dross of unknown composition.

The design is deliberately simple: two sections (mill drum and screen) on a common frame, wear-resistant cast-iron working parts and a minimum of electronics — which means a minimum of breakdowns in the dirtiest corner of the plant. Drum capacity and length are configured to the amount of dross you generate; one mill comfortably serves two hot dross recovery machines, so a single unit usually covers the whole remelt department. A pulse-jet bag filter is an option worth taking — dross milling makes dust, and it is best handled at source.

An honest note: on its own, the mill will not work miracles on cold dross. The stated recovery above 85% applies to the full chain — hot separation, cooling, milling and screening. If you currently sell dross for scrap prices while roughly 40% of its weight is aluminium, the complete processing line pays back faster than intuition suggests. See the dross recycling category or send us your monthly dross tonnage and we will run the numbers. The price range is public: €20–40k EXW depending on capacity, drum length and dust collection.