Abstract
Recycling streams such as used beverage cans (UBC) often arrive as tightly packed bales from many different suppliers, and once those bales are broken apart the pieces mix together, making it difficult to trace contamination or quality problems back to their source. This creates uncertainty in meeting internal specifications and can lower recycled content in cast products. To make the material traceable after debaling, incoming bales are lightly tagged with supplier-specific chemical markers that are chosen to be visible to spectroscopic detection but unobtrusive to normal processing. Markers can be carried in a simple spray or roll‑on coating, applied at very low dosages that do not affect downstream de‑coating or melting. After bale breakup, cameras or spectrometers positioned over the conveyor may look for the marker signatures, reliably recognize tagged fragments, and associate those fragments with the correct supplier. This creates a practical record of where each piece originated, flags contamination events as they happen, and supports supplier accountability and specification enforcement without slowing the line or degrading alloy quality. The result is accessible, scalable source tracking for UBC and other aluminum scrap streams that improves compliance, reduces risk, and helps increase recycled content in the final casts.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Greenlee, Gibson; McCallum, John; Koentopp, Cameron; and Thakur, Adwait, "Spectral And Coded Traceability Of Scrap Using Chemical Tags With Spectroscopic-Based Recognition", Technical Disclosure Commons, ()
https://www.tdcommons.org/dpubs_series/9424