Raman Spectroscopy and Fusion Classification to Identify Plastic Recycables Targeting Microplastics

Identification of plastic type for microplastic particles (size range of 0.001 mm – 5 mm) is vital to understand the sources and consequences of microplastics in the environment. Fourier- transform infrared and Raman spectroscopy are two dominating techniques used to identify microplastics. The most common method to identify microplastics with spectroscopic data is library searching, a process that utilizes search algorithms against digital databases containing spectra of various plastics. Presented in this study is a new method to utilize spectroscopic data called fusion classification. Fusion classification consists of merging multiple non-optimized classification methods (classifiers) to assign samples into categories (classes). The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the applicability of fusion classification to identify microplastics.