Improving drum sieve performance in lightweight packaging waste recycling by automatic parameter adjustment through 3D laser triangulation-based process monitoring

Abstract

Current lightweight packaging (LWP) sorting plants are underperforming, and one of the most important reasons is the fluctuation in LWP input materials. Drum sieving is an essential process in LWP waste processing and recycling, as it is one of the first preconditioning steps and could influence all subsequent processes. If the parameter settings of a drum sieve can be automatically adjusted, the sorting performance of the whole plant could be improved and more recyclates could be fed back into the material loop. Therefore, this study investigated the influence from different parameter settings (inclination angles, rotation speed and throughput/material feeding) on drum sieving efficiency using 3D laser triangulation (3DLT) sensors. The results confirmed the correlation between two parameters (inclination angles, rotation speed) and sieving efficiency. Besides, 3DLT sensors enable inline determination of filling levels, which can be used as a basis for an automatic parameter control concept.