Recycling up to 376,000 tonnes of waste per annum that would otherwise have gone to landfill/incineration through a new sustainable multi-life NIR sortable polymer pigment and recycling system

绝大多数处理塑料的分类回收设施使用近红外（NIR: 750—1700 nm波长）光谱来自动检测聚合物类型以进行有效分类；在过去的二十年中，这项技术被选择和发展为唯一具有成本效益和强大的技术，用于分类混合消费后废物（与中/远红外，拉曼，紫外线，x射线荧光等相比）。近红外光谱可能仍然是分选的事实上的标准识别技术，因为它能够识别脏的和湿的聚合物，设备简单，速度和坚固性，不需要样品制备，而且成本低。然而，近红外技术在试图识别黑色材料和其他含有炭黑的颜色时失败了。这是因为炭黑颜料吸收了入射的红外光束，并阻止了用于识别和分类聚合物类型的聚合物特征光谱的反射。这一数量超过400万吨（欧盟），潜在的年价值超过44亿英镑（如果回收利用），这是对有限资源的严重浪费和经济价值的损失。该项目将以我们迄今为止的工作和经验为基础，创建一个可近红外分类的黑色和彩色聚合物的封闭处理循环，这将使近红外分类操作能够分离黑色和彩色塑料进行回收，这是以前无法做到的，关键是利用现有的基础设施。它还将有助于解决英国新工业战略中提出的重大挑战之一，即清洁增长：“通过低碳技术和有效利用资源，实现更清洁的经济增长。”

The vast majority of sorting recycling facilities that handle plastics use Near Infrared (NIR: 750 -- 1700 nm wavelength) spectroscopy for automated detection of polymer type for effective sorting; this technique has been chosen and developed over the past twenty years as being the only cost effective and robust technique for sorting mixed post consumer wastes (compared to Mid / far IR, Raman, UV, XRay fluorescence etc).NIR spectroscopy is likely to remain the de facto standard identification technique for sorting, due to its ability to identify dirty and wet polymers, the equipment simplicity, speed and robustness, no need for sample preparation, and its low cost. However, the NIR technique fails when trying to identify black materials and other colours that contain carbon black. This is because the carbon black pigment absorbs the incident infrared beam and prevents the reflection of the polymer's characteristic spectrum used to identify and sort polymer types. This volume, in excess of 4 million tonnes (EU), has a potential annual value of over £4.4 billion (if recycled) and represents a significant waste of finite resources and lost value to the economy.This project will build on our work and experience to date in order to create a closed processing loop of NIR sortable black and coloured polymer which will enable NIR sorting operations to segregate black and coloured plastic for recycling where they have been unable to before, crucially - using existing infrastructure.It will also help to address one of the UK's Grand Challenges as set out in the new UK Industrial Strategy -- namely Clean Growth: "The move to cleaner economic growth -- through low carbon technologies and the efficient use of resources"