In October 2020, Citeo launched a call for projects to identify how artificial intelligence can serve recycling and better waste management.
Lixo was selected with its Qualixo program alongside 5 other innovation projects. This project started in June 2021 for a duration of 18 months and involves all the actors of this industry:
- Eco-organization: Citeo;
- MRFs: Kerval & Sotraval;
- Recyclers: Wellman (plastic, transparent PET), Freudenberg (plastic, colored PET), Norkse Skog Golbey (paper), ArcelorMittal (steel);
- Valorplast: company involved in the organization of the recovery and recycling of plastic in France;
- Eurecka: a consulting firm specialized in increasing the performance of MRFs and recycling plants.
Qualixo and all its members aim to develop a single tool allowing MRFs and recyclers to :
- monitor in real time the composition of the material flows (incoming and outgoing);
- detect dangerous undesirables;
- share this information with the different actors of the value chain.
The challenges linked to this development are far from being only technical. Indeed, developing such tools require to also solve a large number of questions relative to operations, communication and interoperability. Lixo, Citeo and all the members of Qualixo thus also aim(beyond the development of the tool) to :
- Identify the best practices for the scaling up and industrialization of these tools;
- Approve the relevance of these tools and make them interoperable between the different actors of the value chain (MRFs and recyclers).
To achieve its goals, Qualixo is composed of two phases: one focused on security, the other focused on quality. The first part of the project will focus on the identification of dangerous, oversized and/or flammable objects at the entrance of the plants and the second part will focus on the quality control of the flows at the exit of the MRFs and at the entrance of the recycling plants.
This project is unique in France, both in its technical ambition and the number of stakeholders involved. The whole Lixo team is therefore particularly proud to count on such determined and relevant partners!
Stay tuned!
