Circular Digital Economy Lab

Making digitization and robot-assisted processes usable for recycling

Recovery of recyclable materials and recyclable product design

The core of the CDEL is a modular, networked, digitized dismantling and recycling line that can be flexibly adapted to different products. In this process, end-of-life products are automatically detected, disassembled as optimally as possible, effectively separated into residual materials and fed to new production routes. The findings from this are used for improved product design.

What is the CDEL?

The Circular Digital Economy Lab (CDEL) is a development and demonstration laboratory to explore technical-economic approaches to circular economy for issues and needs of the SME sector.
In this context, circular economy means the extensive recycling of materials so that their value is retained. By linking information and process technology competencies, supplemented by business management know-how, innovative potentials are developed cooperatively.

How do we proceed?

Sensors are used in conjunction with neural network technologies to classify various objects. The “Classifier” is trained to be flexible to identify a variety of products based on their visual characteristics. After that, the object specifications are stored in a database.

The CDEL is complemented by a modern chemical analysis laboratory for material flow characterization. Based on the findings, analysis tools are developed to optimize production processes and product designs. With their help, both the demonstration plant and existing production processes and product designs are analyzed and compared. Based on the results, processes and product designs are optimized and operational technical solutions are developed. Simulations regarding market suitability and scalability verify the applicability and transfer of the developed strategies.