Sensor Technology Revolutionizes Plastics Recycling for Enhanced Efficiency
Over the next four years, 17 research institutes, associations and industry partners will be working on the research project “Improving the process efficiency of mechanical recycling of post-consumer plastic packaging waste through intelligent material flow management – implementation phase”, ReVise-UP for short. The aim is to increase the transparency and efficiency of plastics recycling. To this end, sensor-based characterization methods are being used on an industrial scale to automatically describe material flows in terms of their material composition, for example, and thus make further use of the data. The Federal Ministry of Education and Research is funding the work with 3.92 million euros. The research project is being led by the Institute for Anthropogenic Material Cycles at RWTH Aachen University. Other partners include the Human Technology Center at RWTH.
Every year, households generate 3.2 million tons of packaging waste. In 2021, only 27% of this was converted into recyclates, while only 12% was used to replace virgin plastic. One of the reasons for this is the high cost of manually characterizing the waste. In the concept phase of ReVise, it was demonstrated that the material flows can be characterized automatically using inline sensor technology; now the focus is on implementing this on an industrial scale.
The project participants want to achieve three effects: To create incentives for improving collection and product qualities and thus increase the quality and use of recycled plastics. Sensor-based material flow characteristics are also to be used to adapt sorting, treatment and plastics processing processes to fluctuating material flow properties. This will lead to a considerable increase in the efficiency of the technical infrastructure. Finally, the improved data situation will enable a holistic ecological and economic assessment of the entire value chain.
In addition to the two RWTH institutions, the following parties are involved in ReVise-UP: Deutsches Forschungszentrum für Künstliche Intelligenz GmbH, Deutsches Institut für Normung e. V., Hündgen Entsorgungs GmbH & Co. KG, Krones AG, Kunststoff Recycling Grünstadt GmbH, SKZ – KFE gGmbH, STADLER Anlagenbau GmbH, Wuppertal Institut für Klima, Umwelt, Energie gGmbH and PreZero Recycling Deutschland GmbH & Co. KG. Support comes from the associated partners of bvse – Bundesverband Sekundärrohstoffe und Entsorgung e. V., cirplus GmbH, HC Plastics GmbH, Henkel AG, Initiative “Mülltrennung wirkt” and TOMRA Sorting GmbH.