Continuous Online Analysis for Recycling Operations
Verify scrap quality, improve recycled material quality, maximise resource recovery and optimise processing with continuous online analysis of recycled materials. Scantech’s GEOSCAN-R is a proven analyser that helps recycling operators reduce material variability, improve product consistency and maximise product value through continuous process monitoring.
Recycling facilities process highly variable materials, making composition and contamination difficult to verify. Changes in feed quality can reduce recovery, affect product quality and increase operating costs.
Scantech’s GEOSCAN-R provides penetrative elemental analysis of conveyed recycling streams, including shredded material and packaged products such as drums, bulk bags, crates or baled material. It can measure valuable components, contaminants and other elements that may impact downstream processing.
Continuous online measurements help operators make faster decisions, improve sorting efficiency, optimise blending and maintain more consistent recycled product quality, resulting in improved resource recovery, higher product value and more efficient recycling operations.
Accurately identifying recycled materials is essential for maximising recovery, maintaining product quality and reducing contamination. Scantech’s continuous analyser solutions monitor incoming, sorting and transfer conveyors, providing continuous information on material composition to support faster and more accurate sorting decisions.
GEOSCAN-R can also verify the quality and value of incoming material before payment, providing greater confidence in received goods and supporting earlier or partial payment where appropriate. Material can be classified into different quality categories for more efficient downstream batch processing.
Leading recycling companies use GEOSCAN-R to measure non-ferrous and precious metal content, verify incoming material quality and confirm blending performance. Grouping materials of similar composition helps improve processing efficiency, reduce variability and maximise the value recovered from recycled products.
Applications
Material identification
Metal classification
Ferrous and non-ferrous separation
Composition verification
Material routing
Recovery optimisation
Contamination can reduce recycled product value, increase downstream processing costs and prevent materials from meeting customer specifications. Early identification of contaminants helps improve product purity, maximise resource recovery and maintain consistent recycled product quality.
Many materials also occur as mixtures, blends or alloys so characterising these materials is critical to ensure the final (often melted) product is not contaminated. Continual recycling of some materials introduces increasing levels of contaminants which eventually degrade the material quality to the point it has little value. High purity recycling stream feed materials are therefore highly valued, and their measurement is critical in preventing continuous product quality degradation.
Scantech’s continuous analyser solutions continuously monitor feed streams, intermediate products and finished recycled materials, providing operators with continuous information on material composition throughout the recycling process. Continuous measurements enable operators to identify contaminants early, improve product quality and make informed processing decisions before dispatch.
Applications
Contaminant detection
Product purity monitoring
Chlorine monitoring
Sulphur monitoring
Tramp material identification
Quality assurance
Maintaining consistent material chemistry is critical when recycled materials are blended for reuse in manufacturing processes. Variations in composition can affect product quality, reduce resource recovery and make it difficult to meet customer specifications.
Measuring product can confirm if it is to expected composition or requires further processing before sale. Measuring a high value component may allow a batch to exceed the payable minimum threshold so that component is not diluted and would otherwise not have a payable average content over a traded load.
Scantech’s continuous analyser solutions continuously monitor blending conveyors, stockpiles and product conveyors, providing operators with continuous information on material composition throughout the blending process. Continuous measurements enable operators to optimise blending strategies, maintain consistent product quality and maximise the value of recycled materials.
Applications
Material blending
Composition control
Product specification control
Feed consistency
Stockpile management
Quality optimisation
Moisture plays an important role in the handling, processing and commercial value of many recycled materials. Variations in moisture can affect material flow, blending accuracy, product quality and overall processing efficiency.
The largest impact of moisture in recycled material handling is its effect in adding to weight of material traded as payment is typically based on contained value. Other effects of moisture can be on processing where the moisture may require additional energy or heat to be consumed or removed or causes a hazardous process response.
Scantech’s continuous analyser solutions continuously monitor incoming materials, blended products and dispatch conveyors, providing operators with accurate moisture information throughout the recycling process. Continuous moisture measurements support improved material handling, optimise blending and help maintain consistent recycled product quality.
Applications
Moisture control
Material handling
Dry weight calculations
Blending optimisation
Product consistency
Process efficiency
Laboratory testing remains an important tool for verifying recycled product quality, but results are only available after material has already passed through the process.
Sampling of highly heterogeneous materials is challenging and recycling streams contain many composite particles that cannot be easily separated. In the case of metals, the samples are often melted before assay to homogenise their composition or make sub-sampling easier. This may result in assays being available many weeks or sometimes months after samples were collected, which means data cannot be easily used for quality management for processing.
Continuous online analysis complements laboratory testing by continuously monitoring the entire conveyed material stream. Operators receive immediate process information, enabling earlier identification of changing feed composition, improved sorting decisions and greater control over recycled product quality.
Limitations of Traditional Laboratory Testing
Periodic sample testing
Delayed results
Limited sample representation
Primarily used for product verification
Benefits of Continuous Online Analysis
Continuous measurement across the entire material stream
Immediate process information
Improved material classification
Earlier identification of contamination
Better sorting decisions
Reduced product variability
Improved operational efficiency
Recycling operations vary in feed composition, conveyor layout and sorting configuration.
Each recycling material analyser system is configured to align with site-specific operational requirements. Measurement frequency, analyser specification and integration parameters are tailored to support process control and plant monitoring.
Scantech does not provide autonomous AI sorting systems focussed on particle by particle separation. Its technology delivers continuous elemental and moisture measurement of bulk materials (feed and product) to support operational decision-making and quality control alongside existing sorting equipment.
Systems are used for monitoring recycled metals, secondary aggregates and other conveyed recycled materials where elemental or moisture measurement supports quality management. Currently analysers are installed in recycling operations where base metal and precious metal measurement is required.
Continuous composition data provides visibility of variability, supporting improved material classification and process adjustment. This is particularly useful where batch processing occurs and variability in a batch is not desirable as it directly impacts process performance.
Yes. Systems are engineered for industrial conditions typical of recycling facilities.
Yes. Systems are designed to integrate with plant control platforms to support monitoring and reporting.
