A refuse lorry loads rubbish at a landfill.
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First, the robots can help sort out the plastic that has been set aside for recycling. Second, the chemicals can help break down the plastic into valuable raw materials. The University of Buffalo in New York has donated $ 2 million from the National Science Foundation to make it happen.
The four-year grant from the foundation’s Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation program was announced in late 2020; researchers are now building a “learning” robotic system to classify plastics.
They hope to have a prototype by October 2021, says Paschalis Alexandridis, University at Buffalo a distinguished professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, who is leading the effort.
The robotic system is now being developed.
“We will use a regular camera on the classification system to identify the plastic material it sees, and we will use that information to find a database that tells us what type of plastic was used in manufacturing that thing, ”Alexandridis says.
They will then build a new multifunctional eye sensor to better detect the type of plastic.
“The sensor uses thermal and acoustic signals to classify in real-time types of plastics using state-of-the-art machine learning methods with a complete database of signatures of different types of plastics …” he said. A prototype for that customer base is likely in 2022 or 2023.
The technology is aimed at facilities to get over materials, or MRFs, or places where plastic goes after you put it at the sidewalk for recycling or into one of those bins in place public.
Professor Alexandridis notes that it is not easy to find labor to sort waste. Automation can help fill that gap and allow smaller MRFs to operate around the clock with very few staff.
Workers sort recycled materials while moving past a conveyor belt at waste recycling … [+]
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University staff at Buffalo note in a press release that plastic recycling efforts in the United States have been thwarted since 2017, when China banned the import of plastic waste with their “National Sword” policy.
Regarding the chemical component, Buffalo researchers say they are exploring “environmentally responsible solutions and new chemicals” to help break down plastics and make them easier to reuse, aka chemical recycling. The method has low greenhouse gas emissions compared to other recycling methods.
Alexandridis explains that “not everything with the word ‘chemical’ is bad for the environment …”
“There is a very large proportion of plastic waste that cannot be separated by mechanical means: materials made of different types of plastic that are glued together (most packaging films are in this category).
“This is where our solution is based on an appropriate solution: the separation is done at a molecular level, and not by hand, as in mechanical classification. Those polymer molecules that break through our process, we intend to recycle by turning them into action materials. With modern chemistry we will turn lemons into lemonade. ”
The two strands of the project funded by the National Science Foundation are therefore based on sensors, artificial intelligence and robotics, along with separation, chemistry and materials science.
Alexandridis says his team includes experience in environmental engineering, economics and commercialization.
“Our goal at the end of the four-year project is to develop and secure technology that is ready for transition from the laboratory to pilot / demonstration scale; and also, we hope, to secure additional funding to showcase our technology in a hands-on setting. ”