The Use Of Hyperspectral Imaging For New Sorting And Control Strategies in Materials Recycling Processes

Abstract:

HyperSpectral Imaging (HSI) is based on the utilization of an integrated hardware and software (HW&SW) platform embedding conventional imaging and spectroscopy to obtain both spatial and spectral information from an object. Although HSI was originally developed for remote sensing, it has recently emerged as a powerful process analytical tool, for non-destructive analysis, in many research and industrial sectors. The possibility to apply HSI based techniques in order to develop innovative on-line sorting strategies for different materials in recycling processes and/or to define new process and quality control logics in different recycling sectors is presented and critically evaluated. The HSI based logics can be profitably applied in order to design and implement fast, reliable and low-cost strategies for: i) quality control of recycled materials that must comply with specific chemical and physical constraints, ii) performance evaluation related to the processing chains and/or real-time tuning of operative variables and iii) classification-sorting actions addressed to recognize and separate different recycled products. Case studies, related to recent advances in the application of HSI to different industrial recycling sectors, as plastic, glass, fluff, bottom ash and compost, and addressed to specific goals as contaminant detection, constituent analysis and quality evaluation are described, according to authors' originally developed application.

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