What CHARAMBA is all about
Today many recycling companies struggle with the value assessment of complex material/waste streams. The main issues are the costly and labour-intensive sampling procedures and subsequent chemical analysis, leading to long waiting times (often several weeks) and the associated financial uncertainty. To counter this, VITO initiated the development of an in-line characterisation technology. This way, heterogenous and complex material streams can be assessed completely – eliminating the need for subsampling – and mass-balances can be produced ‘on-the-fly’.
Currently the technology is demonstrated successfully for a handful of streams on the level of relatively small samples, e.g. a few buckets (‘scan-the-bucket’). In the CHARAMBA project, VITO wishes to further mature the technology, i.e. scale it up to an industrial relevant level or, in other words, to ‘scan-the-truck’.