CIMSA 2003 - lntemational Symposium on

Computational Intelligence for Measurement Systems and Applications

Lugano, Switzerland, 29-31 July 2003

Development of a Smart Technique in Plastic Identification Independent of the

Components Dimensions
Ahmad Lotfi
School of Engineering,
Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK
Phone: +44-I 15-8486429, Fax: +44-115-8486166, Email: ahmad.lotfi@ntu.ac.uk

J. B. Hull
School of Engineering,
Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK
Phone: +44-115-8486449, Fax: +44-115.8486506, Email: bany.hull@ntu.ac.uk

Abstrafl- Using ultrasound attenuation technique and f u w rule-
based system analysis, an intelligent technique is developed to
produce a signature independent of component dimensions for a
range of differentpolymers (plastics) such as PET, PE, PS,etc.
The technique can be employed in recyclina . - wocess
. to sorl
differentpo&meric materiaG in-a relatively fast response time and
in an antomafedhemi-automatedsyslem. The early study indicates
that the method is a powerful tool for the idenfification of
components of complex shape where access to all surfaces may be
restricted.
I. INTRODUCTION
Recycling of plastics that used to end up only at city
landfills or incinerators is increasing around the world. It is
estimated that by the year 2000, the amount of plastics throw
away will be 50 percent greater than at the beginning of the
1990s. Currently only about 3.5% of all plastics generated is
recycled compared to 34% of paper, 22% of glass and 30% of
metals.
For recycling purpose, it is required to identify which
particular plastic material has been used for a given product.
Most consumers recognise the types of plastics by the
numerical coding system created by the Society of the
Plastics Industry in the late 1980s. There are six different
types of plastic resins that are commonly used to package
household products. They are: Polyethylene Terephthalate
(PET), High-Density Polyethylene (HDPE),
Polyvinylchloride (PVC), Low-Density Polyethylene
(LDPE), Polypropylene (PP), Polystyrene (PS). Plastic
consumer goods not identified by code numbers are not
usually recycled. There are actually thousands of different
varieties of plastic resins or mixtures of resins. For example
PVC bottles are hard to tell apart from PET bottles, but one
stray PVC bottle in a melt of 10,OOO PET bottles can ruin the
entire batch. It's understandable why identifying the type of
recycled plastics are so important. Equipment to sort plastics
is being developed, but currently most recyclers are still
sorting plastics by hand.
11. AUTOMATIC PLASTIC IDENTIFICATION
In order to reuse polymeric materials, polymer
identification and analysis of additives are required.
Economic aspects demand fast response times, easy handling
and integration in automated or at least semi-automated
systems. As macroscopic physical methods, e.g. based on
density measurements, are not sufficient to separate
polymers, identification has to use methods monitoring
structural or molecular properties of the plastic under
investigation (Bledzki and Kardasz, 1998). A number of
techniques have been developed to assist in identification of
plastic. They are: Near Infrared Spectroscopy (Huthfehre, et-
al, 1995, VandenBroek, et-al, 1995, Sattmann, 1998), Direct
Pyrolysis Mass-Spectrometry (Qian, Killinger, Casey and
Nicol, 1996), Electrostatic method: Triboelectric ( H e m . ,
Mucci, E y e s and Amner, 1996), X-ray Spectroscopy (Haaga,
Engel, Tietz and Radusch, 1996) and Chemical Recycling
(Paszun and Spychaj, 1997). However, none of these methods
has proved to be either completely satisfactory or acceptable
to a wide proportion of the industrial plastic waste.
The most recent developed technique, Broadband
Ultrasound Attenuation (BUA) analysis, (Hull, Dawson and
Jones, 1995, Hull, Langton, Barker and Jones, 1996) is a
versatile technique that can be applied to a wide variety of
material analysis applications. It is based on a simple
principle of physics: the motion of any wave will be affected
by the medium through which it travels. Thus, changes in one
or more of any measurable parameters associated with the
passage of a high frequency sound wave through a material
such as transit time and attenuation can be correlated with the
physical properties of plastics

0-7803-7783-4/03/$17.00 0 2 0 0 3 IEEE
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 111. ULTRASONIC TECHNIQUE
Ultrasound waves are mechanical vibration involving
movement within the medium in which they are travelling.
The particles in the medium vibrate, thus transferring energy
from particle to particle, along the wave path. Ultrasound
pulses are normally generated and received by piezoelectric
transducers that have been acoustically coupled to the test
material. An ultrasound wave is launched by exciting the
transducer using an electric signal. The sound wave travels
through the test material, being received by another
transducer at the far side. The received signal is then
amplified and analysed.
The relevant measurement parameters will typically be
Sound Velocity, Attenuation and Spectrum content in the
received signal. The speed of sound is directly related to both
elastic modulus and density. Sound energy is absorbed or
attenuated at different rates in different kind of plastics,
governed in a complex fashion by interactive effects of
density, hardness, viscosity, and molecular structure.
Attenuation normally increases with frequency in a given
plastic. All kind of plastics materials tend to act to some
degree as a low pass filter, attenuating the higher frequency
components of a broadband sound wave more than the lower
frequency components. Thus, analysis of changes in the
remaining frequency content of a selected broadband pulse
that has passed through the test material can track the effect
of attenuation (Povey, 1997, Fitting and Adler, 1981).
A. Description
The time-domain representation of the signal in an
ultrasonic spectroscope model is shown in Figure 1. The
analysis of subsystems provides the transformation to the
frequency domain. In (Fitting and Adler, 1981) the analysis is
performed assuming that all subsystems are Linear Time-
Invariant (LTI). To identify the impulse response of the
unknown plastic H(t) from input and output signals v,(t) and
v,(t), the impulse response of other subsystems must be
known.
I7 c
.Ea0 VOID
-I-
Fig. 1 . Ultrasonic spectroscopy system
The pulser generates a series of sharp spike pulse v,(t),
which is applied to the first transducer. The piezoelectric
crystal is therefore suddenly strained and deformed and then
224
HI11
",It) X,It) Y,IV ",I) =*Ill V.1')
Fig. 2. Schematic block diagram illustrating the waveforms in different
stages.
released. However, the displacement of the crystal does not
exactly follow the applied pulse. This is doe to the
mechanical resonance of the crystal. The vibration from the
transducer is coupled into the plastic test piece by the liquid
couplant. The sound travels through the test piece and the
second transducer in the opposite side vibrates, which in turn
produces an electrical signal v,(t). Figure 2 illustrates the
waveforms in different stages of the process.
B. Equipment
A schematic of hardware setup for developed system is
shown in Figure 3. The IPR-100 pulserlreceiver unit from
Physical Acoustics Corporation is a PC based expansion card
with a high energy spike pulser, and a wideband (100MHz)
amplifier receiver. The pulser produces an impulse (spike)
electrical signal. It is a negative pulse programmable from
50-400 volts. The rise time is less than 5 nanosecond with a
repetition rate from 0.5 to loo00 Hz. There are four
programmable energy levels, and variable damping control
from 34 to 2000 ohms.
ADC-200 data acquisition unit from Pic0 Technology
Limited is a two channels analog to digital converter. The
minimum sampling time is I O nanosecond (100 MHz). This
card features a signal generator from 2Hz to 25 WIZ,which is
used as an external trigger for the pulserlreceiver unit. The
transducers are piezoelectric ultrasonic having resonant
frequencies of 5 MHz from Panametrics.
IV. IDENTIFICATION TECHNIQUE
The Fast Fourier Transform (FFT)algorithm calculates the
amplitude spectrum, vz(f), of the received signal v,(t). The
t
Ea-
Fig. 3.Hardware and software configurationof developed
identification system.
 Fig. 4. A typical attenuation trace.

resulting amplitude spectrum for unknown plastics is

subtracted from the amplitude spectrum for a reference
material, w(0. chosen to be de-gassed water. Water is used to
use the base trace due to its minimal attenuation properties. A
typical attenuation trace for plastics is shown in Figure 4.
The use of fuzzy systems to model physical plant is a
rapidly developing field.
0,rtance (") 0-0 Frequency [MHz)
V. FUZZY C-MEANS CLUSTRING
Fig. 5. Attenuation vs. frequency and thickness of PP block.
The fuzzy clusters can be characterized by a q X r class
membership function (CMF) m a t r i x 0 = hkl], whose
entries satisfy the following conditions:
U
I
x u k =I, k=1,2,3,._.,l-
14
r 4. If control error, is less than&, stop. Otherwise substitute
-
o<CU,'
<r, i = 1 , 2 , 3,...,
^*
U with U and return to step 2.
k=l
_-
After a number of iterations, cluster centers satisfy the
where uk
I .
IS the grade of membership for v, object in minimization of cost function, J(U ,C ) ,to a local minimum.
the lIh cluster.
In FCM, cluster centers are determined first at the learning
stage, and then the classification is made by the comparison VI. CONCLUSIONS
of distance between the incoming feature and each cluster
center. At the learning stage, cluster centers are obtained by An intelligent technique, using a fuzzy rule-based system
the minimization of a cost function given below: and ultrasound attenuation analysis has been introduced to
produce a signature independent of component dimensions
for a range of different polymers (plastics) such as PET, PE,
PS, etc. The early study indicates that the method is a
- powerful tool for the identification of components of complex
where c
= {Cl,C , ,C, ,..., C, ,._.,
C,}are q vectors of shape.
cluster centers. The following algorithm is used to determine In our investigation separate transmitting and receiving
the CMFs of each object to a cluster. transducers on opposite sides of the test component are used
(through transmission mode). It is more practical for industry
I . Estimate the CMF matrix 0 .
to use a single transducer coupled to one side of the test piece
2. Calculate cluster centers (C, ,c,,c,
c,, serves as both transmitter and receiver (pulselecho mode).
,..., Cl,___,
using the following equation: Although plastics are highly attenuating materials We are still
continuing our research in this area.

3. Update the CMF matrix, U to c*with:

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