🌱 Can artificial intelligence (AI) be used to automate the sorting of e-waste?
AI can be used to detect objects based on a variety of visual features. This goes beyond what pure color and light-based sensors could do and works similarly to a human eye. In recent years, AI and machine learning has increasingly been used to sort mixed household waste. It has, however, to date not been used widely for the sorting of shredded e-waste.
🌱 Has AI computer vision been used commercially?
At an electronic scrap recycling facility located in Sittingbourne in the UK, an “optical sorting unit” that uses AI and machine learning has been deployed “to help identify and separate mixed materials”. The Finnish company, Kuuskoski Oy and the London-based company, Recycleye Ltd. partnered up to make this possible. Installed “at the back-end” of the SWEEEP Kuusakoski plant, the AI-powered optical sorter from Recycleye helps sort e-waste. SWEEEP Kuusakoski and Recycleye have said that this is the “first successful commercial application of AI computer vision to detect and sort WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) in the UK”. This development is thought to play a role in bringing “even greater volumes of low-carbon and resource efficient raw materials back into the circular economy".
🌱 How does the technology work?
The new technology from Recycleye “introduces artificial intelligence for automated sorting of WEEE and associated metals”. For example, it can separate “printed circuit boards (PCBs) distinctly from other pieces of metal and plastic”. The technology sorts between high value items – such as brass, cables, copper, and PCBs – and lower value materials – such as aluminum, batteries, ferrous metals, plastics, and steel. It can then “extract precious metals for recovery”.
🌱 Can batteries be identified by AI?
Lithium-ion batteries pose a fire hazard for recycling facilities, as they come with a significant “risk of ignition during the sorting process”. The removal of batteries from waste streams is often a manual task. AI and machine learning, however, now have “the potential to detect and sort [out] batteries based on visual features”. The Recycleye technology can “identify and remove batteries from the wider materials stream”. The “system's ability to recognise […] batteries reduces the risk of ignition during the recycling process”.
Read more about SWEEEP Kuusakoski and Recycleye here:
- https://www.circularonline.co.uk/news/recycleye-uses-ai-to-detect-and-sort-weee-for-the-first-time/
- https://resource.co/article/sweeep-kuusakoski-and-recycleye-implement-ai-sorting-e-waste
- https://recycleye.com/sweeep-kuusakoski-ai-weee-sorting/
- https://www.letsrecycle.com/news/recycleye-and-sweeep-use-ai-for-waste-electrical-sorting/