LIBS approach makes recyclable waste easier to ID and classify
Identification, classification, and management of recyclable waste materials has become faster and more precise, thanks to a spectroscopy technique that detects different materials’ elemental composition.
Using laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS), a team from Hefei University of Technology (Hefei, China) has discovered the process of identifying and categorizing waste materials for recycling—at both the consumer and industrial levels—could be more efficient, rapid, and accurate.
A technique used for elemental compositional detection, the LIBS system comprises a high-energy pulsed laser, a spectrometer, and a digital delay generator (see Fig. 1). The high-energy laser passes through lenses and irradiates the surface of a sample—in the Hefei team’s research, the sample is recyclable waste.
This produces dielectric breakdown of the formation of plasma, explains researcher Lei Yang, a professor at Hefei’s School of Instrument Science and Opto-electronics Engineering. The plasma emission light is collected by the spectrometer component for spectral analysis, while the digital delay generator controls the working time between the laser and spectrometer to avoid collecting continuous spectra and instead acquire characteristic spectra corresponding to the elements of the sample, with a high signal-to-noise ratio.
