Electrostatic effects have been known for more than 2,500 years. Electrostatics was used already as from the beginning of the 20th century, in particular for sorting of mixtures of minerals.
We uses electrostatic effects to separate the most different mixed materials: differences in conductivity enable separation of extremely fine metal parts from plastics and other non-conductive materials KWS, while the tribo-electric effect enables entirely different mixtures of plastics to be electrostatically separated EKS.