Student presents work at student conference

During the 2023–2024 winter semester, Mr. Faiz Bin Norh Mood completed his work placement semester at SCHOLZ Recycling GmbH. Scholz Recycling GmbH is a company that recycles cars, trains, technical equipment, and a wide variety of components on a large scale in accordance with industry standards. In addition to metal recovery, the company is increasingly focusing on the recycling of plastics. BLACK is the dominant color in technical applications—whether in cars, tools, household appliances, or information technology. Since black objects absorb a large portion of radiation, sensor-based sorting using infrared radiation is not straightforward. SteinertUNisort, a plant manufacturer specializing in sorting technology, took on this challenge and developed a new sorting system for this group of plastics. As part of his twenty-week work placement semester, the student had the opportunity to accompany the commissioning of this system at the Espenhain site with his own experiments.

Sampling took place in the actual waste stream and ultimately yielded four samples, each containing 1,000 black reference particles. Each particle was assigned a number so that it could be analyzed and identified during the experiments.

In addition to the necessary technical expertise, the process required a great deal of patience and finesse.

With these results, Faiz Bin Noor Mohd was able to demonstrate that the sorting plant meets the customer’s required specifications for the material streams under investigation. To present his findings at the end of the work placement semester, ZIRKON welcomed company representatives to Zittau.

On October 9, Faiz Bin Noor Mohd had the wonderful opportunity to present his work at the 2nd Saxon Student Conference as part of the 56th Power Plant Engineering Colloquium. Through a selection process, his work was chosen by a jury in the field of circular economy, specifically in the area of process engineering. It’s great that these kinds of opportunities exist for students.

A big thank you goes to our industry partners SCHOLZ Recycling GmbH and UnisortSTEINERT GmbH for providing exciting and practical topics for student projects and for their trusting collaboration on joint research projects.