Applications to Recycling

Material separation technology is critical to the success of the material recycling industry. End-of-life products, post-consumer waste, industrial excess, or otherwise collected materials for reuse are typically mixed with other incompatible materials. These materials must be segregated using material separation processes. This thesis investigates the performance and design of material separation systems for recycling through modeling material flows within these systems. The material separation system models developed here are suited to material re-cycling because they encompass all types of separation process and any configuration of those processes as well as treat binary and multi-material streams. These mod-els capture the material behavior of separation systems through mass flow balance equations constructed using system configuration and process performance data. The Bayesian material separation model is used to capture the performance of separation stages processing a binary material mixture, while the material separation matri