CLASSIFICATIONS OF PLASTIC POLYMERS BASED ON SPECTRAL DATA ANALYSIS WITH LASER INDUCED BREAKDOWN SPECTROSCOPY

In the industry of the plastics recycling, previous separation is very important, since the treatment used for recycling is substantially different according to what polymer it deals with. In this work we propose a quick and effective method for the classification of plastic polymers through laser induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS). In order to find which is the best mathematical method to use, five different methods have been proven: Euclidean Distance; Euclidean Distance Squares; Pearson's Correlation Coefficient; Blocks; and four different types of polymers were used as samples: polyethylene; polyethylene-tereftalate; polystyrene; and polypropylene.