The development of a new sorting technique was crucial. Laser-induced plasma spectroscopy (LIBS) makes the process particularly accurate, fast and reliable. Other approaches to recovering aluminium involve high investment and operating costs. Whereas PreZero Pyral’s process enables profitable and sustainable recovery of aluminium from mixed waste.
The usual weaknesses of the LIBS process could be eliminated by two aspects, among others. Firstly, new algorithms were developed to meet requirements and secondly, the process was integrated in such a way that it is optimally designed for the company-specific system infrastructure. This combination enables the PreZero PYRAL S.A.A.L.T (Sorting of Aluminium Alloys using Libs Technology) system to identify the elemental components of up to 200 individual items in the waste stream per second. Metal-containing waste is irradiated to generate plasma, and the light generated in the process of ionisation is collected by a high-resolution spectrometer. Finally, the atomic composition of the material is determined.
This system enables the sorting of up to three transport line meters of recyclable material per second. As a result, the individual items are sorted by type and are then available for the next step in the aluminium recovery process.
