APEX AI High Speed Optical PP Bottle Sorter for Plastic Recycling

APEX Optical Bottle Sorter Features

The GI optical bottle sorter is the enhanced flagship upgraded high-speed belt sorting model developed on the basis of the classic G whole-bottle sorting platform. It keeps the original 3.5m/s high conveying speed and large continuous throughput capacity of the G series, while adding independent NIR infrared spectral detection module to realize dual identification of appearance defects + plastic resin material, specially customized for complex multi-component mixed waste plastic bottle sorting demands.

Different from plastic vertical sorting equipment only applicable to crushed plastic flakes and pellets, GI fully inherits the core strength of the G series soft flat belt lossless bottle conveying structure, which prevents scratching, extrusion and deformation of intact bottles during high-speed operation. Meanwhile it carries out all-round iterative upgrades on the whole detection system and algorithm framework:

1. Ultra-sensitive dual optical recognition system

Equipped with upgraded high-definition color CCD+AI visual camera plus built-in InGaAs near-infrared spectrum sensor. The visual channel accurately captures faint stains, yellowing discoloration, tiny cracks and irregular deformed flaws hard to distinguish by basic G model; the infrared spectrum channel penetrates bottle bodies to identify internal resin molecular features, telling PET, PE, PP, HDPE and other different plastic raw materials apart.

2. Strong adaptability to ultra-complex mixed feedstock

It perfectly handles messy incoming materials including mixed-size bottles, severely deformed bottles, foreign sundries mixed in raw materials, low-contrast color defective bottles and cross-material blended bottles that cannot be completely purified by single-function G sorter, realizing one-step thorough impurity removal and material classification.

3. Optimized balanced feeding & high-speed stable operation

The newly upgraded anti-jam bottle arrangement feeding system ensures neat and single-row bottle arrangement under long-term high-speed 3.5m/s operation, avoiding missed detection and wrong sorting caused by overlapping bottles. Long-term running precision will not drift, greatly lifting the final purity and commercial added value of finished recycled whole bottles.

Positioned for medium-to-high standard large-volume waste plastic bottle recycling lines and multi-type mixed bottle alternating sorting projects, GI upgrades from the single appearance screening of G series to appearance defect elimination + resin material classification dual-function sorting. It is the ideal upgraded sorting equipment for recycling factories that require stable high-speed output while pursuing higher finished product purity and multi-material automatic separation capability.

Sorting Workflow — Optical Bottle Sorter Line Layout

Step-by-Step Optical Bottle Sorter Line Workflow(GI Series Dual-Function Version)

1. Mixed waste plastic whole bottles are fed into the recycling line as original raw materials.
2. The conveyor elevator lifts bulk bottles and delivers them to the bottle orientation system, which arranges randomly placed bottles into uniform forward conveying posture to avoid overlapping and missed detection.
3. Bottles flow into the 1st Stage GI Belt-type Optical Sorter equipped with Color CCD+AI Vision + NIR Infrared Spectral Dual Detection System: (1) The CCD & AI visual module eliminates discolored, stained, deformed, cracked and other appearance-defective bottles; (2) The built-in infrared sensor automatically identifies and separates non-PET bottles (PE, PP, HDPE and other different resin bottles) and discharges them separately.
4. Qualified PET bottles screened out from the first sorting are sent to the 2nd-stage fine sorting equipment via recycle conveyor for secondary precision purification.
5. After two rounds of dual-dimensional inspection covering both appearance quality and material composition, high-purity whole PET bottles are output as finished high-value recycled raw materials.

Parameters of Optical Bottle Sorter

Performance Comparison

ACCEPTED — AFTER Whole Bottle Sorting

Purified PE whole bottles separated from mixed waste bottle materials, with sorting purity up to 99.9%.

ACCEPTED — AFTER Whole Bottle Sorting

High-purity PP whole bottles screened out from multi-resin mixed plastic bottles, final purity reaches 99.9%.

Video of AI Optical PP/PE Bottles Sorter Separation

GI Series Dual Detection Optical Bottle Sorter Separates PP & PE Whole Bottles via NIR Infrared Material Identification

This demonstration video shows the core material sorting capability exclusive to GI upgraded model. Equipped with Color CCD+AI Vision + NIR InGaAs Infrared Spectral Dual Detection System, the GI belt-type optical whole bottle sorter can penetrate bottle surfaces to identify the molecular spectral fingerprint difference between PP and PE resins. Even when PP and PE bottles are identical in color and appearance and cannot be distinguished by pure visual equipment (G series), GI accurately separates the two types of plastic raw materials automatically in one sorting pass. It realizes simultaneous removal of surface defective bottles and classification of different resin bottles, greatly improving the purity and economic added value of recycled plastic bottle output.