Classifying – separating – and assorting solids – Sorting special items – and certain methods and apparatus for... – Condition responsive means controls separating means
Patent
1997-06-09
2000-05-09
Nguyen, Tuan N.
Classifying, separating, and assorting solids
Sorting special items, and certain methods and apparatus for...
Condition responsive means controls separating means
209587, 209639, 209938, 250223R, 250225, B07C 500
Patent
active
060606770
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
CROSS-REFERENCES TO RELATED APPLICATIONS
Not applicable.
STATEMENT REGARDING FEDERALLY SPONSORED RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
Not applicable.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to determination in first and second dimensions of characteristics of material, for example automatic inspection and sorting of discrete objects of differing compositions, e.g. waste objects, or automatic inspection of sheet material, which may be in the form of a strip, for surface layer composition, e.g. surface layer thickness.
2. Description of Related Art
With the recent focus on collection and recycling of waste, the cost effectiveness of waste sorting has become an essential economic parameter.
In the "Dual System" in Germany all recyclable "non-biological" packaging waste excluding glass containers and newsprint is collected and sorted in more than 300 sorting plants.
Objects can be sorted on the basis of: sorted out manually. Some beverage cartons contain an aluminum barrier and by eddy current induction they can be expelled from the waste stream. Generally, beverage cartons in their simpler form present a composite object consisting of paperboard with polymer overcoats on both their inside and outside surfaces.
To make a positive identification by automatic means is very difficult. Physical shape is normally quite distorted, making any camera-based recognition very complex unless the printing pattern is made in a specially recognisable way, or the carton is equipped with a recognizable marker or tracer.
Several sorting systems exist today that can sort a number of different plastics bottles/objects from each other when they arrive sequentially (i.e. one-by-one). The detection is based on reflected infrared spectrum analysis. To separate the various polymers a quite elaborate variance analysis has to be performed and thus detection systems become expensive. The objects being fed sequentially pass beneath the infrared spectral detector whereby infrared is shone onto the objects and the relative intensities of selected wavelengths of the infrared radiation reflected are used to determine the particular plastics compound of the plastics passing beneath the detection head. Downstream of the detection head are a number of air jets which blow the individual plastics objects into respective bins depending upon the plastics which constitutes the majority of the object.
A similar system is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,134,291 in which, although the objects to be sorted can be made of any material, e.g. metals, paper, plastics or any combination thereof, it is critical that at least some of the objects be made predominantly from PET (polyethylene terephthalate) and PS (polystyrene) as well as predominantly from at least two of PVC (polyvinyl chloride), PE (polyethylene) and PP (polypropylene), for example objects including: an object made predominantly from PET, an object made predominantly from PS, an object made predominantly from PVC and an object made predominantly from PE. A source of NIR (Near Infra Red), preferably a tungsten lamp, radiates NIR onto a conveyor sequentially advancing the objects, which reflect the NIR into a detector in the form of a scanning grating NIR spectrometer or a diode array NIR spectrometer. The detector is connected to a digital computer connected to a series of solenoid valves controlling a row of air-actuated pushers arranged along the conveyor opposite a row of transverse conveyors. The diffuse reflectance of the irradiated objects in the NIR region is measured to identify the particular plastics of each object and the appropriate solenoid valve and thus pusher are operated to direct that object laterally from the conveyor onto the appropriate transverse conveyor. The computer can manipulate data in the form of discrete wavelength measurements and in the form of spectra. A measurement at one wavelength can be ratioed to a measurement at another wavelength. Preferably, however, the data is manipulated in the form of spectra and the spectra manipulated, b
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Foss-Pedersen Geir
Johansen Ib-Rune
Mender Clas Fredrik
Tschudi Jon Henrik
Ulrichsen Borre Bengt
Nguyen Tuan N.
Tiedemanns-Jon H. Andresen ANS
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