The role of measurement in industrial recycling

The increase of environmental awareness has made reycling an important part of industrial activity. Products and processes must be designed to enable the reuse of raw materials and/or components used, once the resulting product is mature enough for scrapping. Measurement and sensing enter this process because the identity and the properties of the materials/components to be recycled are in most cases only approximately known-in some cases not at all. There has, however, been limited effort until now to analyse where and how sensing should be used to ease effective recycling of industrial products. In this paper, two obvious applications of sensing in the recycling of industrial products will be presented and discussed: sensor controlled automatic disassembly of industrial products (e,g, small electrical motors, micro-ovens) and sensing-based guard systems to protect the health of people working with those parts of recycling that cannot be automatised.

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