Quality control in the recycling stream of PVC cable waste by hyperspectral imaging analysis

Valentina Luciani, Silvia Serranti, Giuseppe Bonifazi, Peter Rem

Research output: Chapter in Book/Conference proceedings/Edited volumeConference contributionScientificpeer-review

3 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

In recent years recycling is gaining a key role in the manufacturing industry. The use of recycled materials in the production of new goods has the double advantage of saving energy and natural resources, moreover from an economic point of view, recycled materials are in general cheaper than the virgin ones. Despite of these environmental and economic strengths, the use of recycled sources is still low compared to the raw materials consumption, indeed in Europe only 10% of the market is covered by recycled products. One of the reasons of this reticence in the use of secondary sources is the lack of an accurate quality certification system. The inputs of a recycled process are not always the same, which means that also the output of a particular process can vary depending on the initial composition of the treated material. Usually if a continuous quality control system is not present at the end of the process the quality of the output material is assessed on the minimum certified characteristics. Solving this issue is crucial to expand the possible applications of recycled materials and to assign a price based on the real characteristic of the material. The possibility of applying a quality control system based on a hyperspectral imaging (HSI) technology working in the near infrared (NIR) range to the output of a separation process of PVC cable wastes is explored in this paper. The analysed material was a residue fraction of a traditional separation process further treated by magnetic density separation. Results show as PVC, PE, rubber and copper particles can be identified and classified adopting the NIR-HSI approach.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationAdvanced Environmental, Chemical, and Biological Sensing Technologies XII
PublisherSPIE
Number of pages11
Volume9486
ISBN (Electronic)9781628416022
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2015
EventAdvanced Environmental, Chemical, and Biological Sensing Technologies XII - Baltimore, United States
Duration: 20 Apr 201521 Apr 2015

Conference

ConferenceAdvanced Environmental, Chemical, and Biological Sensing Technologies XII
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityBaltimore
Period20/04/1521/04/15

Keywords

  • Cable waste
  • Hyperspectral imaging
  • Magnetic density separation
  • Quality control
  • Recycling

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