The paper describes a new eddy-currents separation technique, based on a complementary air-water method, designed for the recovery of nonferrous particles, smaller than 5 mm, from heterogeneous mixtures. The main part of the equipment is a horizontal magnetized rotary cylinder with four poles of NdFeB permanent magnets, alternately oriented. This separation method consists of initial electromagnetic actions upon strongly conducting particles in air, followed by the combined electromagnetic actions and Magnus forces upon tailing particles in water. The dependencies of the separation parameters Grade, Yield and Separation Efficiency versus rotation speed for an Al-Cu waste are presented and discussed.