SEPARATION OF POLY(VINYL CHLORIDE) FROM POLY(ETHYLENE-TEREPHTHALATE) AND OTHER PLASTICS USING AUTOMATIC SORTATION DEVICES

While most poly(vinyl chloride) (PVC) produced in the United States is used in the manufacture of durable building products, emphasis recently has been directed at recovery of PVC from post-consumer disposable items such as bottles, rigid containers and rigid film. Manual sortation involving visual inspection for either the characteristic blow molding scar or code marking is at best only 90% accurate. Recent activity has focused on development of automatic sortation based on recognition of the chlorine atom which serves as a "fingerprint" for identifying PVC. Two separate technologies for sortation of such packaging are discussed in this paper - the first involves X-ray fluorescence, the second utilizes electromagnetic radiation absorption.