High throughput sorting system

We are a group of international students at Fonty. Fontys is a university of applied Science that is located in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. The school has various faculties. Industrial Engineering & Management (IE&M) is one of these faculties. In IE&M, the teachers are keen to let the students understand the impact of technology on behaviour, options and performance processes. Every week, the school organizes one topic. This is now the fourth week of our study program. As a result, this period will be discussed about the technology that has been chosen by the groups of Industrial Engineering & Management. 

The students are assigned to groups from A to K. We are in group K that has four members of international students. Namely, Ahmed Al-Ruzeiqi (Omani), Ahmed Abdelkader (Egyptian) Michael Amoah (Ghanian) and Tadros Tekhlezgi (Eritrean).
The technology that group "K" found most interested is about high throughput sorting technology. In the old days, after hatching was only easy to know whether the chicken is a hen or a rooster. As can be seen in the picture, chicks are hanged on the head, if it kicks by its leg then it is recognized to be a male otherwise it is a female. 

Currently, modern technology helps to differentiate gender egg before hatching. This technology is basically, handling products by automatic sorting machines.  

InOvo is a company that is using this new technology. Accordingly, the group called the company but unfortunately, the company was skeptical to share the information. This new technology which is sponsored by Leiden University has not published globally yet.

This issue was discussed with Mr. Dirne, and he advised us to look at similar topics with a different point of view such as sorting vegetables for instance. Likewise, Mr. Martijn gave us an example of sorting plastic to simplify the process of recycling.  Based on this feedback, group K decided to focus on the history of sorting and the impact of modern technology.

The group approaches this project using the PCOI tool (Process, Control, Organization, and Information) to look into the process and the impact when modern technology is applied. 

The background of plastic sorting

Research question

"To what extent can modern technologies efficiently improve the process of sorting plastics?"

Background

Plastic pollution is when plastic has gathered in an area and has begun to negatively impact the natural environment and create problems for plants, wildlife, and even the human population. Often this includes killing plant life and posing dangers to local animals. Plastic is an incredibly useful material, but it is also made from toxic compounds known to cause illness, and because it is meant for durability, it is not biodegradable. 

Serious effects of plastic pollution

1. It Upsets the food chain
2. Groundwater Pollution
3. Land Pollution
4. Air Pollution
5. It kills animals
6. It is expensive

Why Plastics needs to be sorted and recycled 
In 2010, the EU’s total plastic waste production reached 2,5 billion tons of which only 36% was recycled. The rest was landfilled or burned even though some 600 million tons could have been recycled or reused. This is as a result of inefficient plastic sorting processes.

Method:
Manual plastics sorting the technique of plastic material involves identification by shape, colour, appearance, a trademark of the plastic that distinguishes it for visual identification by the operators. Manual sorting techniques were useful in such a situation where plastic components are large enough to justify the time and effort involved since it is very labour intensive, has a bad working environment and is economically unviable. 

Control:
The flat sorter belt conveyor and inclined belt conveyor are used to making the work easier.

Organization:
Labour who has lower educational level work for sorting plastics. It doesn't need much effort for the firm to train the labour to use the sorter belt convey. Sorting manually is difficult to have a high percentage of accuracy to have the same type of plastic.

Information:
Product specifications are important for sorting the same type of plastic.


https://www.conserve-energy-future.com/causes-effects-solutions-of-plastic-pollution.php
https://www.kidv.nl/6226/wur-handbook-for-sorting-of-plastic-packaging-waste-concentrates.pdf?
ch=EN
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e6e5/110c06f67171409bab3b38f742db6dc110fc.pdf

Sorting using infrared

Near-infrared Spectroscopy

Near-infrared analysis technology: this technology has been widely applied in plastic detection and identification and it is one of the fastest-growing analytical technologies as it has been used in medical applications to measure tissue oxygenation and to detect hemoglobin and myoglobin content of skeletal muscle.

The technology is accurate, nonpolluting and non-destructive and measurement is rapid without a need for surface pretreatment. The technology is used, and it identifies 18 types of plastics with an error of 3% it has been used to identify the plastic solid waste of pro ethylene and propylene. The results show that the technology itself can also identify high-density polyethylene and low-density polyethylene as well, as it exceeded the target that was set for it. Sorting system has been established by Chinese companies to classify each type of plastics with high speed using this technology (Near-infrared) as it improves data acquisition speed.

Identification system:  the system consists of a device and software in particular with a detector called IngAas to measure the wavelength of each type of surface based on the wavelength type it identifies the plastic.

The software that is required to be used is called LabVIEW for data acquisition cards. The software is programmed through MATLAB for identification algorithms. While LabVIEW is used for the graphical user interface, so it is mostly a mixture between the 2 software’s to optimize the best result. The company machine shows it identifies 97% of the plastic samples and it has an error of 3%.the table below shows the positive and negative of this technology.

Pro’s	Con’s
97% accurate	Distance between samples can affect the test
Non-pollutant	Light can create dispersion for machine
Non-destructive	It does not recognize all types of plastics
Thickness does not matter	Shredder is needed to make the particles in small

Lastly, the technology can find high potential in the future but currently preprocessing is required from the plastics to grind first and sort them. But normally sorting is always needed first before grinding but the technology itself can improve in the future for recycling/analytical purposes.

Friedrich, K. (2018). Polymer composites for tribological applications. Advanced Industrial and Engineering Polymer Research, 1(1), 3–39. doi: 10.1016/j.aiepr.2018.05.001

Andersen, L. (2015). Plastic sorting at recycling centres. doi: 10.6027/tn2015-511

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZ0aINfaOtU&t=151s

Suggested Future Technology

Suggested Future Technology

The group did desk research to find some alternative technologies regarding plastic sorting that could be more efficient and accurate therefore less time consuming, more reliability and higher quality standards.

The team started to discover and dive deeper into the topic of colour sensor technology, in which the technology covers the most pitfalls that near-infrared sorting does not cover when it comes to sorting plastics.

For example, near-infrared technology does not recognize black plastics. In such a case, black plastics are sometimes mistakenly mixed with other plastics which is dangerous for recycling. If the colour sensors are added to this existing technology, it will help bridge the black colour gab this near-infrared technology is lacking currently. In this way, the plastic sorting process will be accurate and very efficient. 

The colour sensors will have a build-in camera-based system that will be used to classify materials based on their physical properties together with fast and precise ejectors to reject all defective/unwanted plastics. With the help of a compressed air blast, unwanted plastics will be blown away from the conveyor belt to a separate location to ensure the best accurate rate for the good plastics. The picture is an example of a camera color-sensor.

In conclusion, technology is rapidly growing in business and has a massive impact on the industrial business particularly. Plastic sorting started manually, which made sorting plastic a primary process in traditional factories as it is time-consuming and it requires a big amount of human resources. When technology came, there were many ways of identifying plastics. The current most accurate way is the near-infrared plastic sorting technology which gives an accuracy of 97%. The group looked at the pitfall in the infrared technology and suggested an additional colour sensor to optimize the process in the future.    

http://www.redwave.com/recycling/kunststoff/sensor-gestuetzt/redwave-nirc/




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