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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