HyperSort Hyper-spectral imaging for advanced textile sorting and food control

Hyperspectral imaging using broadband light sources is very important to textiles and meat. Textile recycling is a growing industry due to its immense pollution of microplastics and chemicals, and its large carbon footprint. The EU will impose mandatory textile waste collection by 2025, and recycling processes will be ramped up after that. Hyperspectral imaging will most likely be a crucial tool for the cost-effective processing of complex modern garments at the high volumes that are consumed today.



The meat industry is continuously working on upgrading sidestream products such as offal, which are not readily used for human consumption today despite containing high-value proteins. The challenges with processing offal are its mixed nature (muscles, glands, fat etc.) and short shelf-life, which calls for rapid quality sorting that can handle the heterogeneous matrix. Again, hyperspectral imaging appears to be an ideal solution.



In HyperSort, we will develop a hyperspectral optical engine based on a supercontinuum light source. Tomographic spectroscopic imaging will be explored and expert partners in machine-learning-based chemometrics will tailor a partner-developed open-source software to applications first in textile sorting, then exploring sidestream meats. To achieve state-of-the-art performance, a novel supercontinuum light source and low-cost camera will be developed. Research indicates this will yield >100x lower sampling time to allow high-volume processing.

Key figures

Period:
2023 - 2026
Funding year:
2022
Own financial contribution:
4.86 mio. DKK
Grant:
13.96 mio. DKK
Funding rate:
74 %
Project budget:
18.82 mio. DKK

Category

Programme
Innovationsfonden
Technology
Bio and waste
Keywords
Cirkulær økonomi
Case no.
2105-00039A

Participants

NKT PHOTONICS A/S (Main Responsible)
Partners and economy
Partner Subsidy Auto financing
Teknologisk Institut 1,04 mio. DKK 0,70 mio. DKK
NKT PHOTONICS A/S 3,80 mio. DKK 2,04 mio. DKK
NLIR ApS 2,22 mio. DKK 0,74 mio. DKK
Københavns Universitet 2,35 mio. DKK 0,42 mio. DKK
Danmarks Tekniske Universitet 3,36 mio. DKK 0,59 mio. DKK
Boer Group 0,10 mio. DKK 0,06 mio. DKK
University of Basque County 1,10 mio. DKK 0,31 mio. DKK

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