The material recovery facility of Hündgen Entsorgung served as the industrial testing ground for this technology, which was supplied by Digimarc and Pellenc ST. The goal of the experiments, which ran from December 2023 to February 2024, was to distinguish between food-grade PP films and hygiene-grade LDPE films.
The December 2023 experiments yielded results that were above 70% in purity levels during single-pass sorting, over 95% in detection efficiencies, and over 85% in sorting efficiency. Two-pass sorting, which is frequently employed in recycling plants, is anticipated to enhance these statistics. In February 2024, the technology demonstrated great efficiency in detection (89.9%) and sorting (75.1%) with 88.1% purity, even under more challenging conditions such as mixed waste streams and higher throughput.
The outcomes showed that the technique might produce recycling streams of higher quality than what is now possible. The technology may be ready for industrial use and may even attain Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 9 based on its reliable performance under a variety of circumstances.
In Denmark and Germany, a further three-month study will concentrate on sorting hard packaging with digital watermarks.If successful, this will open the door for widespread industrial deployment by confirming the system’s resilience in an operational setting.
