Existing waste sorting technologies in some cases are not able in sorting an important fraction of potentially recyclable materials and in other cases recovery of raw materials is not performed in an efficient way because it is not based on direct material recognition. In particular for plastic sorting no commercial solution is able to sort black plastics and to identify the presence of additives such as Brominated Flame Retardants (BFR) and pollutants which are forbidden by EU directives on recycling. For this reason, black plastics, which represent 30-50% of plastic scraps in Waste Electric and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) and End-of-Life Vehicles (ELV), end up as residue and are disposed in landfills, buried or exported outside EU, producing additional costs instead of value for the recycling industry. Indeed, the recycling rate of plastics from WEEE in Europe is only 20% of the amount returned with the waste stream. For what concerns metal sorting, the automatic identification and sorting of small (< 30 mm) non-ferrous metal scraps (named Zorba) – that accounts for about 25 % of metal scraps derived from shredding of ELV and WEEE - is difficult and industry cannot recycle this waste stream with existing technologies. Therefore, this waste stream cannot be recycled but is sold as undifferentiated mixture at a very low price. Diamatex is a start-up company, founded in 2016 by three experienced physicists, to valorise and promote their invention called SELEX, working with soft X- rays, able to recognize and discriminate different materials. Thanks to an original scheme that exploits synergistically XRF, XRT and X-ray scattering, the technique developed and patented by Diamatex is able to discriminate the different polymers used in the matrix for both coloured and black plastics and provide quantitative information about presence of fillers, reinforcers, additives, stabilizers, flame-retardants, and pollutants present in the polymer matrix, including BFR. Moreover, the technology allows to detect in-line selection small (< 30 mm) non-ferrous metal scraps. This solution, identified and evaluated during the feasibility study thanks to discussions with end users and a new ad hoc prototype was developed for automatic selection of metals scraps, in order to demonstrate its feasibility and the expected performances for the in-line industrial machine. The feasibility study allowed to analyse the needs, specifications and potentials for market acceptance of the two applications and to define the development and market strategy.
