PRIORITY

This application is a U.S. national phase application of Intl. App. No. PCT/US2018/060932 filed on Nov. 14, 2018, which claims priority from Chinese Pat. App. No. 201711139983.7 filed on Nov. 16, 2017.

FIELD

The invention belongs to the field of aero aluminum alloy sorting and recovery technology, and in particular, provides a fully automatic online aero aluminum sorting and recovery system based on LIBS technology, which is suitable for automatic sorting, detection and recovery of large batch of aero aluminum.

BACKGROUND

Aluminum alloy is a class of non-ferrous metal structure materials which is the most widely used in the aviation industry, and different grades of aluminum alloys, due to the addition of alloy composition and different physical characteristics thereof, have relatively large differences in the aircraft applications. For example, the 2XXX-series aluminum-copper alloy is widely used in aircraft structures, and the 7XXX-series aluminum alloy has an ultra-high strength and thus is very suitable for aircraft frames and high-strength accessories.

With the retirements of aircrafts, a large number of aero aluminum alloys are required to be recovered. Many grades of aluminum are used on aircrafts, wherein the prices are greatly different. For example, in the current market, the price of the 2XXX-series of aluminum alloy is about 20,000 yuan (RMB)/ton, the prices of the 6XXX-series of aluminum alloy is about 40,000 to 50,000 yuan (RMB)/ton, while the price of the 7XXX-series of aluminum alloys is about 70,000 yuan (RMB)/ton. The common recovery method is to mix all of the different series of aluminum alloy removed from the aircrafts together to make into aluminum ingots, and the market price is only about 20,000 yuan (RMB)/ton. The value of aluminum ingots is greatly reduced.

Further, the current sorting and recovery technology commonly used for waste metal, such as wind separation, magnetic separation, flotation separation, gravity separation, eddy current separation, etc., cannot determine the element compositions of the waste metals, thus the sorting and recovery of different varieties of waste metal cannot be achieved according to the alloy composition, series or grades.

The Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) technology mainly uses a pulse laser to excite a metal surface, so that the electrons in the atom are subjected to transition, resulting in the plasma cloud and releasing a spectrum, and then the spectral information of different elements can be obtained by a spectral detector. This technology can be used to analyze the metal composition, and accurately determine different materials of waste metal components according to the analysis results. The LIBS detection technology does not require a direct contact with the material, which is suitable for an online test and large-scale sorting, and has a high detection efficiency.

SUMMARY

A fully automatic online aero aluminum sorting and recovery system based on LIBS technology, consisting of six portions: a sample feeding unit (1), a surface treatment unit (2), a material positioning unit (3), an LIBS analysis and detection unit (4), a transfer unit (5) and a sorting and recovery unit (6), wherein the sample feeding unit (1) is connected to the transfer unit (5) via a chute and the arranged samples are slid onto a conveyor belt located on the transfer unit (5); the transfer unit (5) is configured to drive the conveying belt by using a stepper motor so as to connect various parts of the system together in series and realize the transfer movement of the samples in the various parts of the system; the surface treatment unit (2) is arranged at a rear end of the sample feeding unit (1), so that the surface of the samples is quickly treated by the surface treatment device, and then the samples are transferred by the transfer unit (5) to the material positioning unit (3); the material positioning unit (3) is configured to scan profile information of the samples by a three-dimensional morphology scanning sensor and transmits this information to the LIBS analysis and detection unit (4) via a cable; the samples are further transferred by the transfer unit (5) to the LIBS analysis and detection unit (4) which receives the synchronization signal from the material positioning unit (3) and emits laser according to the speed of the conveyor belt when the sample is passed, to irradiate the surface of the treated samples, and a spectral signal is introduced into a spectrometer by an optical fiber for collecting and processing, so as to determine grade information of the samples; the detected samples are transferred by the transfer unit (5) to the sorting and recovery unit (6), and based on the detected sample grade information, the samples are slid into respective baskets via the chute when passing through the different baskets.

Other aspects of the disclosed aero aluminum sorting and recovery system will become apparent from the following detailed description, the accompanying drawings and the appended claims.

