Usage of plastics is increasing in everyday life. Untreated plastic waste is causing enormous damage to the environment, ecology and public health. Thus, recycling of used plastics is gaining importance and has become a great technological and societal subject. In India at present, most of the plastic waste is being manually graded and recycled into very low value raw material. The manual process is unhygienic and prone to subjective and manual errors. Realizing the importance of the problem, a Near Infrared (NIR) spectroscopy based plastic waste sorting system has been developed.
The system sorts plastic waste materials moving on a conveyor into five types of plastics viz., Poly-Ethylene-Teraphthalate (PET), Poly-Propylene (PP), Poly-Vinyl-Chloride (PVC), Poly-Styrene (PS) and Poly-Ethylene (PE). The system is useful for segregating waste plastics into different value-added polymer fractions for efficient recycling. Aids in easy management of solid plastic waste for recycling. Laboratory prototype has been developed & demonstrated. Technology has been transferred to two entrepreneurs for commercialization.
Salient Technical Features
- Based on Near Infrared Spectroscopy and Chemometric techniques
- Real-time, non-destructive and fast sorting of waste plastics
- Sorts singulated plastics moving on a conveyor
- Sorts 5 types of plastics viz., Poly-Ethylene-Teraphthalate (PET), Poly-Propylene (PP), Poly-Vinyl-Chloride (PVC), Poly-Styrene (PS) and Poly-Ethylene (PE)
- Accurate classification of plastics (near 100% for PET materials)
- Capable of sorting about 100 plastic items per minute or approximately 4 tons of plastics per day.
- Embedded hardware with wireless interface for remote, safe handling and monitoring
- Automated, low cost system using open source hardware and software
- User-friendly Graphical User Interface.
Competing Features
- Automatic, on-line sorting of 5 types of plastics
- Implemented on low cost embedded hardware and open source software