Mid Infrared Acousto-Optical Tunable Filter-Spectrometer for Rapid Identification of Black Plastics from Automobile Construction

Abstract

Black plastics are common compounds of many technical devices and consumer goods. A well known example is the usage in automobile construction. Plastic recycling is gaining more and more importance, with fast plastic type identification being an essential question. This article presents a cost-effective and rugged alternative to FT-IR techniques, based on an acousto-optical tunable filter spectrometer, which is able to master the special difficulties in the recognition of black plastics.