RapidSort® Description

RapidSort®P75 comprises three main sections - Feed, Singulation, and Identification and Sorting.

The simplicity of the system, and in particular its single identification stage, is the reason for its high accuracy and low cost. Such an arrangement was only made possible by recent advances in spectrometer hardware, in computing speed and power, and by extensive research into plastic polymer spectra.

RapidSort®, which was developed in conjunction with the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, and Curtin University in Perth, makes use of the pioneering work of these universities in polymer technology and Rofin's leading edge optical expertise.

Hand Schema

A feeder is used to generate an even stream of bottles. Bottles are then singulated, and presented to the Identification Unit one at a time. The Identification Unit uses a high-resolution, high-speed NIR and Visible spectrometer-based system to determine polymer type and colour in a single stage. Each bottle is scanned several times to allow for dirt, tops and labels etc. The bottle then continues on to the appropriate ejection port where it is blown off pneumatically.

Schematic 3

The system works on a positive sort basis in order to maximise accuracy. Non-plastic contaminants and unidentified items continue on to the end of the sorter where they can either be sent to waste or re-routed back to the In-feed. The RapidSort® plastic sorter will not sort paper, paperboard, glass, aluminium or steel, which should be removed from the sorter stream. However the sorter has been designed to cope with the small amounts of non-plastic contaminants typically found in commingled plastic streams. In addition, standard inexpensive pre-sort equipment (e.g. air classifier or trommel) can be supplied as part of an overall package to enable sorting of highly contaminated in-feed streams.