The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Nov. 06, 2001
Filed:
Jul. 14, 1999
Edward J. Sommer, Nashville, TN (US);
John T. Rich, Lebanon, TN (US);
National Recovery Technologies, Inc., Nashville, TN (US);
Abstract
A high accuracy rapid system for sorting a plurality of waste products by polymer type. The invention involves the application of Raman spectroscopy and complex identification techniques to identify and sort post-consumer plastics for recycling. The invention reads information unique to the molecular structure of the materials to be sorted to identify their chemical compositions and uses rapid high volume sorting techniques to sort them into product streams at commercially viable throughput rates. The system employs a laser diode (,) for irradiating the material sample (,), a spectrograph (,) is used to determine the Raman spectrum of the material sample (,) and a microprocessor based controller (,) is employed to identify the polymer type of the material sample (,).