A process for the segregation, sterilization, and purification of recycled plastic medical waste with the subsequent production of plastic products made therefrom is disclosed. Also disclosed is a method for the front-end segregation of recycled plastic medical waste into a polypropylene waste stream and a mixed plastic waste stream. These segregated streams are further purified through a processing method that removes contaminating fibrous, metal and other waste products. Polypropylene and mixed plastic streams isolated using these methods yield a homogenous material that can be blended with other materials for the production of raw plastic or for extrusion to form commercial plastic products. A method for tracking regulated and non-regulated medical waste stream production kinetics and chain of custody from discrete waste disposal sites is also disclosed.

A pelletizing apparatus includes a filter device connected with a melt feed, a granulator downstream of the filter device, particularly an underwater granulator, a water treatment device, and a control means for controlling the filter device, underwater granulator, and water treatment device and adapted to provide at least one control parameter. The apparatus includes at least one machine-readable and -writable identification means for storing and providing an item of component-specific information and being associated with a component in the flow path of the melt or the process water, and a reading device communicating with the control means to receive the component-specific information from the identification means, and a writing device to write the identification means with the component-specific information, the control means to adapt the control parameter based on the component-specific information to provide the component-specific information, and, based on the component-specific information, to execute a diagnostic process.

Methods and systems for analysing products comprising marked materials and marking and tracking such materials are provided. A method of quantifying the proportion of a marked material comprising luminescent markers in a product comprises (i) obtaining a composite signal associated with the product, the composite signal including spectroscopic data and imaging data collected from the product, the spectroscopic and imaging data associated with a luminescent signal of the one or more luminescent markers in the marked material; (ii) identifying the marked material based on spectroscopic data associated with the one or more luminescent markers; (iii) quantifying the proportion of the marked material that is present in the product based at least in part on said imaging data of the composite signal, wherein said quantifying is based at least in part on the relative positions of and/or the number of luminescent markers detected in each image of the product.

Vehicle pneumatic tyre comprising a sealant layer, and method for detecting a vehicle pneumatic tyre comprising a sealant layer and for recycling a vehicle pneumatic tyre comprising a sealant

Components of a system for marking, identification and segregation of plastic waste, including waste of multi-layer and multi-component plastics is disclosed herein. The coating material for marking plastics contains a base of the coating material and fluorescent markers dissolved or dispersed in the base of the coating material. The composition of the coating material or the way it is printed constitutes an arbitrary code, consistent with the adopted marking system. The coating material can be washed off from the surface of marked material with a washing agent. The code contained in the composition of the coating material or in the way it is printed is readable after irradiating with appropriate wavelength. The use of printed graphic or text patterns with at least two coating materials containing different fluorescent markers allows for creation of a practically unlimited number of individual identification codes.

The invention comprises methods of robotically separating unwanted heteroatom-containing materials from a plastic mixture and catalytically pyrolyzing the resulting mixed plastics to obtain olefins and aromatics. Systems and compositions useful in the catalytic pyrolysis of plastics are also described.

A process for the segregation, sterilization, and purification of recycled plastic medical waste with the subsequent production of plastic products made therefrom is disclosed. Also disclosed is a method for the front-end segregation of recycled plastic medical waste into a polypropylene waste stream and a mixed plastic waste stream. These segregated streams are further purified through a processing method that removes contaminating fibrous, metal and other waste products. Polypropylene and mixed plastic streams isolated using these methods yield a homogenous material that can be blended with other materials for the production of raw plastic or for extrusion to form commercial plastic products. A method for tracking regulated and non-regulated medical waste stream production kinetics and chain of custody from discrete waste disposal sites is also disclosed.

A plastic item, such as a beverage bottle, conveys two distinct digital watermarks, encoded using two distinct signaling protocols. A first, printed label watermark conveys a retailing payload, including a Global Trade Item Number (GTIN) used by a point-of-sale scanner in a retail store to identify and price the item when presented for checkout. A second, plastic texture watermark conveys a recycling payload, including data identifying the composition of the plastic. The use of two different signaling protocols assures that a point-of-sale scanner will not spend its limited time and computational resources working to decode the recycling watermark, which lacks the data needed for retail checkout. In some embodiments, a recycling apparatus makes advantageous use of both types of watermarks to identify the plastic composition of the item (e.g., relating GTIN to plastic type using an associated database), thereby increasing the fraction of items that are correctly identified for sorting and recycling. A great number of other features and arrangements are also detailed.

This disclosure relates method and system for systematic disposal and dynamic procurement of recyclable waste resin. Typical systems for disposal and procurement of recyclable resin pose challenges such as lack of segregation and collection of different types of plastics, data on recycling centers in proximity, uncertainty over resin identification codes, and so on. The disclosed system provides a framework having multiple smart collection units that may be communicatively coupled with a server. The smart bins are capable of collecting plastic items and taking multiple images thereof. The system determines information on type, weight, and location of the plastic resin in the plastic item by means of a trained CNN model, and stores in a repository. The system further includes a route optimization model that is enables selection of a set of collection units for procurement of the resin (of a specific type and a specific quantity).

This invention relates to a closed loop process and system for collecting and recycling of materials commonly used for packaging. The process comprises the steps of collecting and sorting of items containing material to be recycled, creating one or more datasets relating to the portions of sorted materials containing information relating to the quantity and origin as well as identity, brand, type and/or quality of sorted material, and registering at least the quantity and origin and optionally also about identity, brand, type and/or quality of sorted material in a blockchain. Embodiments of the invention comprise performing software assisted item recognition for determining at least one property of an item.