Waste as a raw materials source: fast analysis makes it possible

Due to the scarcity in (raw) materials, businesses are increasingly eyeing their own waste streams as a potential source of raw materials. But how to determine which components of those waste streams are still useful?

SUEZ

SUEZ and Umicore are transporting truckloads of waste to Charamba. With the naked eye it is very hard to tell one particle from the next.

The problem is often that the particles overlap instead of being neatly juxtaposed. To distinguish one from the other it takes three cameras.

X-ray scanner

First the waste passes under an X-ray scanner comparable to the cameras that scan your luggage at any airport. Some materials absorb X-rays more than others, allowing the camera to distinguish the different materials.

RGB scanner

A ‘standard’ RGB scanner photographs the particles to identify their colour.

Until now this was an expensive and time-consuming process because laboratories need time to analyse samples. Charamba, a joint project of Ghent University and VITO, has developed a less complex solution that uses cameras. So how does it work?

Charamba focuses on ‘characterise-to-sort’. This is a characterisation device that identifies individual waste particles by combining different sensors. As we speak, the researchers are scaling up the technology for industrial applications.

3D scanner

To get a complete picture of the particle the 3D camera scans its dimensions.

Subsequently the information collected by all three cameras is sent to a computer. Using machine learning artificial intelligence (AI), the computer assembles the three scans in real time, making it possible to identify the raw materials that make up the particles in the waste stream.

The waste is sorted and identified as gold, silver, iron, copper, ... that can be reused as a raw material.

Curious to find out how it works exactly?