Tomra upgrades Innosort Flake NIR sorting system 

March 15, 2024
Its redesigned mechanical and optical architecture increase its precision.

Innosort Flake This Tomra sorting system uses a near-infrared (NIR) spectrometer and dual-color camera technology to sort plastic flakes for recycling. Tomra recently upgraded its Innosort Flake system to improve its ability to sort material streams, enabling simultaneous detection of polymers, colors and foreign materials. It has a changeable illumination background and detects millions of colors.  

What’s new? Redesigned mechanical and optical architecture. These updated features boost the precision with which Innosort Flake detects and ejects unwanted flakes or foreign materials, providing higher purity of sorted fractions in fewer sorting steps. 

Benefits Higher yield and throughput. The improvements allow more plastics materials to be separated and recycled that would otherwise be lost or downcycled for lower-grade applications. Mechanical design changes have reduced machine vibration, improving optical accuracy over the long term and reducing maintenance requirements. In addition, the sorting system has a new, user-friendly interface to provide high flexibility and on-the-fly configuration for multiple plastics applications, and it provides detailed on-screen statistics for accurate real-time process overview. Its high-contrast imaging can differentiate between white, opaque and natural, transparent and translucent flakes, while the use of up to four chutes allows for multiple sorting and recovery steps in a single machine. 

Tomra Recycling Sorting, Charlotte, North Carolina, 980-279-8800www.tomra.com/en/sorting/recycling 

About the Author

David Tillett | Associate Editor

Associate Editor David Tillett writes and edits for Plastics Machinery & Manufacturing, Plastics Recycling and The Journal of Blow Molding. He covers new products, industry news, patents and consumer and business equipment. He has more than 20 years of experience in daily newspaper, online and magazine journalism.