In order to strengthen the competitiveness of the industry in terms of raw material supply, the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology ILT and Cronimet Ferroleg. GmbH jointly developed a laser-based sorting process for scrap metal as part of the BMBF-funded "PLUS" project.
A new sensor makes the recycling of metallic raw materials many times more efficient than was previously possible. The EU project "REVaMP" goes one step further. Since January 2020, the Fraunhofer ILT has also been contributing its expertise in the field of material analysis at European level, thus making an important international contribution to securing a resource-efficient supply of raw materials in the long term.
The new laser-based sorting process enables alloys in scrap metal to be identified and sorted much faster and more accurately than before. This was demonstrated using the example of processing high-speed steels (HSS), which contain valuable alloying elements such as cobalt. With laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS), a technology is now available that can identify more than 20 special alloys even in small scrap parts, automatically, quickly and without contact. The plan is to build a sensor that can be installed in existing industrial plants in order to make the recycling process fundamentally more efficient.
The pilot system for laser-based recycling, which was developed as part of the PLUS project, is suitable for the automatic processing of high-speed steels, for example.
