AI Can Use Infrared Signature to Sort Plastics - ASME

No matter how conscientious the consumer, by the time the material gets to the end of the conveyor belt at the recycling plant, most plastics end up mixed together. Due to the rather rudimentary sorting techniques in use, only a small percentage of the plastic we try to recycle ends up getting recycled. "The ordinary consumer, with the best intentions--and also the correct procedure--puts everything in the plastic bin. We get it all," said Mogens Hinge, an associate professor in the department of biological and chemical engineering and process and materials engineering at Denmark's Aarhus University, and co-author of the paper "Plastic classification via in-line hyperspectral camera analysis and unsupervised machine learning," which appeared in Vibrational Spectroscopy this year. "Now we have a problem: we can wash it, but we can't unmix it. And plastic is not just plastic."