Process for the continuous separation of discarded hygiene articles into their components

Claim 1

A process for the continuous separation of discarded hygiene articles made of (1) flock, cut or mixed flock and cut absorbent materials and (2) sheet covering for said absorbent material comprising first tearing the discarded hygiene articles into large pieces and then conducting the pieces over a plurality of superposed oscillating sieves having successively decreasing mesh widths with the sieve having the smallest mesh width being lowermost with the remaining sieves being positioned thereabove in the order of increasing distance between the meshes, the smallest mesh width being so selected that the absorbent material will pass through the sieve and the torn covering will remain as a sieve residue, passing the absorbent material through the sieves, collecting the large pieces of torn coverings as sieve residue and removing said collected pieces.