재활용을 위한 형광물질 개발

Fluorescent sorting could light up recycling rates

재활용률을 높여줄 형광 물질을 이용한 분류

Most of us dutifully separate our plastic packaging from the rest of our rubbish. But less than 30 percent of the UK's plastic ends up being recycled.

번역: 우리들 대부분은 플라스틱 포장지를 쓰레기에서 분리합니다. 그러나 영국의 플라스틱 중 30 퍼센트도 되지 않는 양이 재활용되고 있습니다.

"Current recycling technologies look at the NIR (near infrared) signature of plastics and so we can sort plastics by polymer type. But one of the limitations is that we can't identify what the products have been used for in the past. So we can't tell the difference between a bleach bottle and a milk bottle."

번역: "현재 재활용기술은 플라스틱의 NIR (근적외선) 특징을 보이기 때문에 플라스틱을 고분자 유형에 따라 분류할 수 있습니다. 그러나 그 한계들 중 하나는 플라스틱 제품들이 과거에 어떤 목적으로 사용되었는지를 확인할 수 없다는 것입니다. 그래서 표백제 병과 우유 병의 차이를 구별할 수 없습니다."

Researchers at Brunel University London and industry partners Nextek say their new fluorescent light technique can change this.

번역: 브루넬 유니버시티 런던과 업계 동업자인 넥스텍의 연구자들은 그들의 새로운 형광 기술이 이것을 바꿀 수 있다고 말합니다.

"This technology that we've been working on will be able to tell us whether something was previously food grade, so we can then recycle it back into food grade applications. And the big implication here is that we can close the circle on packaging for the first time."

번역: "우리가 작업해 온 이 기술은 무엇이 이전에 식품용이었는지를 알려줄 수 있을 것이며, 그것을 다시 식품용 적용방식으로 재활용할 수 있습니다. 그리고 큰 의미를 갖는 것은 처음으로 포장에 대한 사이클을 끝맺을 수 있다는 것입니다."

The system works by adding phosphors, the luminescent materials that give strip lights their glow, to plastic labels or packaging. "When the plastic bottles are sent to the recycling plant, if they have our labels on, then they'll go up the conveyor belt in the normal way. There's a system for reading the bottles currently with our labels on - that system can be changed quite easily to then recognize a bottle we want to sort, either positive or negative. And then the conveyor belt system puts a jet of air that separates the bottle into another bin." The system can be retrofitted to existing high-speed sorting systems. So it's cheap - and should make plastic recycling more financially attractive to businesses. "It doesn't have to be confined to plastics. It could be any kind of recycling that might be interesting - in the automotive industry, in the electronics industry, in fact in the building industry." In initial full-scale tests the system sorted up to 98 percent of labeled plastics with 100 percent accuracy.

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http://hunift.blogspot.kr/2017/05/reuters-fluorescent-sorting-could-light.html