Quality control by hyperspectral imaging in solid waste recycling: Applications

The possibility to systematically utilise HyperSpectral Imaging (HSI) techniques for the classification/inspection of both materials to recycle and/or products resulting from solid waste processing, of different origin and nature, can open new interesting scenarios. Results demonstrated as this technique can represent a very powerful and promising analytical tool to develop inspection/control strategies at processing level, in the recycling sector, and for the design nd set up of innovative on-line quality control strategies, enabling a full certification of the recovered products. Despite these advantages, HSI is still difficult to be systematically applied, especially in real-time industrial applications, because of the huge amount of data constituting a spectral image. In this paper, different applications of HSI techniques, with reference to the solid waste recycling sector are presented, and critically analyzed.