Glass recycling technology gets tough

Traditionally, leaded, heat resistant and ceramic glass have caused problems for the glass recycling industry, causing an increase in impurities which can seriously damage the waste stream. If heat resistant glass becomes part of container glass, the rogue particles will cause stress that will break the container. Elements of these types of glass are found in products such as cooker worktops and can cause severe damage to recycling equipment. Leaded glass is another issues as there are legal limits to the amount of lead that can be used in glass in the EU.

A new sorting system aims to eliminate these problems for the recycling industry, analysing glass on the basis of its specific chemical composition. The Redwave QXR-G sorting system works with the X-Ray Fluorescence technique to identify elements such as titan, zinc, zirconium or lead. The process eliminates these elements in one step, and can be recalibrated to search for different elements in future.

The technology has been developed in partnership with US company Innov-X-Systems, by BT Wolfgang Binder GmbH. The system is being further tested and improved in a trial with German company Bernhard Reiling Glas Recycling GmbH in March 2010. So far the tests have been going well.