For example, under the European Green Deal, 55% of plastic packaging waste will have to be recycled by 2030. This means a better design for the recyclability of materials, but also better sorting performance. With more technical and fragmented waste, guaranteeing the quality and capture of recoverable products is becoming a real challenge. Innovation therefore takes centre stage in the strategies of industrial recycling companies.
For more than 20 years, the teams at Pellenc ST have been developing sorting solutions to recover waste and support operators in their quest for performance. With current infrared and visible spectrometry solutions, optical sorters are already capable of advanced sorting operations, such as the separation of PET trays/bottles or PET single-use trays/multi-use trays. On the other hand, for certain complex separation requests, there is still no solution with existing equipment. This is where artificial intelligence comes in.
At Pellenc ST, it is used wisely, in addition to existing solutions, to boost performance and help operators manage their industrial equipment and control their quality. By combining NIR/VIS and DEEP LEARNING technologies, optical sorters gain in analysis speed and can then provide a solution for the most complex sorting tasks. In concrete terms, the neural network is trained with millions of images to be able to identify the unique characteristics of objects, such as shape, size or other visual differences.
Last year, Pellenc ST launched its first solutions equipped with artificial intelligence for the cleaning of PE streams and the complex separation of paper/cardboard. By relying on its CNS BRAIN technology, Pellenc ST is now taking up a new challenge in the field of PET sorting. “We have developed a new artificial intelligence model capable of recognizing transparent PET bottles covered with a sleeve or a large label, which are difficult to recognise using NIR/VIS alone. Our model already detects more than 85% of sleeved bottles, and we expect to exceed the 90% mark in the near future,” says Kevin Alazet, artificial intelligence manager for Pellenc ST. This solution also helps to reduce losses, which have fallen from 7% to less than 2%. In addition, CNS BRAIN is one of the artificial intelligence options offered by Pellenc ST that does not require additional equipment and does not generate additional energy consumption or maintenance needs. In this way, artificial intelligence can provide a real boost to competitiveness while remaining frugal when it comes to its carbon footprint.
For even more difficult applications, Pellenc ST equips its machines with an additional camera and offers the AISORT option. This innovation will make it possible to address new use cases by offering the industry new separation possibilities. The best example is that of food/non-food separation. Food and non-food packaging is often made from the same or very similar material. This means that conventional sorting systems have difficulty in distinguishing between and sorting this packaging. Thanks to this artificial intelligence module and multi-sensor fusion, the optical sorters supplied by Pellenc ST can now address this issue and obtain high-quality recycled products through extremely accurate sorting.
Pellenc ST also offers quality control solutions equipped with artificial intelligence. Installed at the end of the sorting line, AISEE gantries monitor the quality level of the stream, as well as the overall efficiency of the sorting centre. By providing real-time information on the composition of the stream, AISEE becomes a real decision-making tool. Supplemented by the support of experts well-versed in the issues of the waste industry, this data becomes intelligent and is a valuable source of knowledge. Once collected and analysed, it is translated into personalised dashboards and reports, which are essential for operators to guarantee the required levels of purity, maintain availability rates and speed up commissioning phases. Finally, all the equipment supplied by Pellenc ST is ISO 27001 certified, guaranteeing the robustness, security, and sovereignty of data.
With these new solutions, Pellenc ST is beefing up its offering and expanding its technological portfolio to pursue its mission: to support the sectors to recover more materials and make the economy a little more circular and regenerative every day.
