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Pick It

illustration

Smart sorting of metals

 

Partners

Comet Traitements

Citius Engineering

GeMMe, Université de Liège

 

Duration

5 years

 

Key Words

Sorting, Sensors, Aluminum, Alloy Elements

 

Context

The "Pick-it" line of development, coordinated by Comet Traitements, concerns the sorting and separation of alloys. These alloys are derived from the treatment of scrap metal shredder residues such as End of Life Vehicles (ELV), Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) and scrap collection. The ability to characterize and sort such alloys with high performance tools is absolutely essential to recycle these alloys in regional and European high added value chains.

 

The option of manual sorting, which is labor intensive and of limited efficiency, is only conceivable in countries with little regard for environmental and social impacts. The emergence and stabilization of alloy recycling value chains in our regions thus requires the development of an intelligent process for in-depth compositional analysis of single scrap alloy fragments which then have to be sorted accordingly.

 

Objectives and results

To this end, the Pick It consortium (ULiège-GeMMe, Citius Engineering, Comet Traitements), is developing a characterization and sorting bench for a series of alloy families identified during 2015 characterization campaigns carried out on Comet Traitements’ production sites. This experimental bench combines several sensor technologies (spectral, 3D, LIBS ...) in order to discriminate the various alloys to be separated with the use of ejectors or gripper robots.

 

The three main economic fallbacks of the Pick It project are :

 

- The development of a service for the characterization and design of sorting systems that will ultimately employ a dozen researchers specializing in industrial vision and characterization of raw materials,

 

- The valorization, through Citius Engineering, of manufacturing services for end-user sorting systems,

 

- The specialization of Comet Traitements in the recycling of high added value non-ferrous metals, a clear differentiator in terms of competitiveness from potential challengers in this sector.