Electrical Capacitance Tomography Based Sorting Technique for Wasted Plastics

This study has launched a concept to measure real time two-dimensional temperature distribution non-invasively by a combination of electrical capacitance tomography (ECT) technique and a permittivity-temperature equation for plastic pellets. The concept has two steps which are the relative permittivity calculation from the measured capacitance among the many electrodes by ECT technique, and the temperature distribution calculation from the relative permittivity distribution by permittivity-temperature equation. ECT sensor with 12-electrode is designed to measure and visualize the cross sectional temperature distribution during polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) pellets cooling process. The images of the normalized relative permittivity distribution are successfully reconstructed at every time step during the process. The images indicate that the normalized relative permittivity of PMMA pellets is decreased as the temperature is decreased.