Method for sorting waste, in which method the waste or recycleable material intended for sorting is brought in waste bags to a sorting apparatus, which includes a conveyor, from which the waste bags belonging to different waste components are separated from each other by guiding them into the containers according to the waste components or to further processing. In the method a waste bag, an identifier arranged in connection with it and/or the content of the waste bag is identified with a sensor system, which includes a number of sensors monitoring different properties, which sensors essentially simultaneously read and/or identify a waste bag, an identifier arranged in connection with it and/or the content of the waste bag when the waste bag is transferred on the conveyor via the reading area of the sensors, and in which method on the basis of information coming from the sensors the waste bags are sorted into different waste components using one or more handling devices of the sorting apparatus. The invention also relates to an apparatus and to a system.

The present invention relates to a method of identifying and/or distinguishing materials by means of luminescence, wherein at least one luminescent substance is incorporated into the material and/or applied onto the material and the luminescence behaviour of the substance is analysed after excitation by means of radiation, and the use thereof for identifying and/or sorting and/or recycling and/or authenticating and/or performing a quality check and/or formulation check on materials.

In order to achieve a higher material throughput and/or a higher sorting speed in a sorting installation (10) for use in plastics recycling, it is provided, in the case of an apparatus which is intended for separating one or more material fractions from at least one material stream of free-flowing bulk material and which has a directing device (12), via which the material stream is guided under the action of gravitational force, also has an optical sensing device (16) for the spectroscopic detection of composition- or condition-dependent properties of individual fractions (13) contained in the material stream, and additionally has a separation device (14), by which the individual fractions (13) contained in the material stream are separated mechanically in dependence on detection results of the optical sensing device (16). Here, the directing device (12) is designed in the form of a shell surface of a rotational solid or truncated pyramid, which widens downwards, and the optical sensing device (16) is arranged in a scanning plane below the rotational solid or truncated pyramid.

The invention relates to a process and an apparatus for sorting reusable raw-material pieces (5) which are moved continually in conveying direction (2) by a transport means (1), where the chemical composition of the raw-material pieces (5) is analyzed by laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) and automated sorting of the raw-material pieces (5) is implemented depending on the composition found, where the raw-material pieces (5) in a first step are subjected to a plurality of first laser pulses (6) in order to remove surface coatings and/or contaminants from the raw-material pieces (5), and in a second step, one or more second laser pulses (7) are directed at those locations of the raw-material pieces (5) from which the surface coatings and/or contaminants have been removed, with exposed material of the raw-material pieces (5) being converted by the second laser pulses (7) into a plasma, where the laser (3) used for the first and second laser pulses (6, 7) is the same, and the area of the raw-material pieces (5) over which the first laser pulses (6) are moved and which is freed from surface coatings and/or contaminants is greater than the area of the raw-material pieces (5) that is embraced by the second laser pulses (7), the focal diameter and the focal point of the laser beam being kept constant between the first and second laser pulses (6, 7). In this way it is possible, utilizing only one laser, to achieve undistorted analysis of the composition of the raw-material pieces (5) and to perform sorting in dependence on said analysis.

A system and process for sorting and recovery of recyclable materials, and in particular, sorting and recovery of recyclable materials from mixed waste comprising municipal solid waste in a materials recovery facility.

An illustrative embodiment disclosed herein is a method including receiving, by a waste diversion system and from a source, waste materials, inserting, by the waste diversion system and into the waste materials, one or more markers, generating, by the waste diversion system, finished goods including a portion of the waste materials, and detecting, by the waste diversion system, a portion of the one or more markers corresponding to the portion of the waste materials in the finished goods.

Provided is a method for processing electronic and electrical device component scrap according to an embodiment of the present invention includes a smelting raw material sorting step of sorting a processing raw material containing valuable metals processable in a smelting step from the electronic and electrical device component scrap, wherein the method comprises removing lump copper wire scrap contained in the electronic and electrical device component scrap using a parallel link robot.

Systems and methods for classifying and sorting materials in order to produce a collection of materials that are composed of a particular chemical composition in the aggregate. The system may utilize a vision system and one or more sensor systems, which may implement a machine learning system in order to identify or classify each of the materials. The sorting is then performed as a function of the classifications.

A material sorting system sorts materials utilizing multiple stages of classification and sorting, including a vision system that implements a machine learning system in order to identify or classify each of the materials, and Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy to perform a subsequent classification and sorting of the remaining materials.

Systems and methods for classifying and sorting of plastic materials utilizing a vision system and one or more sensor systems, which may implement a machine learning system in order to identify or classify each of the materials, which may then be sorted into separate groups based on such an identification or classification.