The south of Paris waste management syndicate of SEMARDEL has been innovating for decades by developing ever progressive waste sorting centers . The challenge that SEMARDEL faced was that it needed human pickers to extract recyclables from the recyclables waste stream when it entered their facilities. The work was inhuman and difficult to fulfill since it exposed people to dull, dirty and dangerous work. The amount of material to process kept increasing and labour was hard to find.
Semardel, France
Application
Refuse line fiber & container
Challenge
Solution
A process designed hired by SEMARDEL called Neos/Wasoria reached out to Waste Robotics to find an automated solution to the capture of recyclables on their refuse line. Waste Robotics provided a tailored solution by designing a refuse line capture roboti that allowed for robotic extraction of various type of recyclables. The system is composed of two (2) delta/spider style robots equipped with artificial intelligence vision and a Waste Robotics proprietary robotic grappling tool called the “VENTURI” that allows for picking of various objects.
Benefits
The robotic sorting line was installed in March 2021 and has been extracting recyclables since. The line can process large volume of refuse and extract 4500 objects per hours of either small size (2”) or large size (24”) objects. This resulted in a improve sorting capability and a reduction of labour cost and investment in a sorting cabin for the refuse line pickers.
- 200 000$ per year in cost saving
- +30% purity rate
- 2 years investment payback
