[A Target Discrimination Method Based on the Active Polarization Imaging with the Distribution of Polarization Fresnel Ratio].

As the polarization characteristics are the physical property determined by the material itself, its corresponding polarization image contains abundant target's information. Using polarization information to identify the target is always a hot research topic in the field of the target detection. Active polarization imaging has more advantages compared with passive polarization imaging because of its high signal-to-noise ratio and good controllability. In this paper, based on the detailed analysis of the theory of the distribution of polarization Fresnel reflectance ratio, a kind of active polarization imaging method is proposed with detecting the polarization Fresnel ratio of the surface of the object. The proposed method adopts two kind of polarization light with orthogonal polarization direction at the light emission part to exposure to the target scenario alternately. Then two cameras side-by-side at the detecting part respectively equipped with two orthogonal polarization direction filters to capture the polarization images. Meanwhile, the detectors are placed in different detecting direction to acquire the polarization imaging with active polarization light source illuminating. Finally, with transmitting the data to the calculating center, optical constants can be recovered from the polarization data by the optimization fitting technique. Because the materials of target's surface are different, the corresponding optical constants are different. Then the purpose of discriminating the targets with different materials is achieved. The simulated and actual measured experiments are explored to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. Simulation experiment shows it is not only scientific but also more convenient and effective in that the proposed method can distinguish the different materials using the calculated optical constants. The actual measured data further shows that the method is able to do better in recover optical constants of targets, especially in the distinction between metal and dielectric materials. Furthermore, the system has great application prospect in the field of target detection and camouflage recognition with its simple structure and practicability.

[An information extraction method of spectral images based on 3D spectral angle statistics].

A novel information extraction method of spectral images based on 3D spectral angle statistics is proposed. By computing the spectral angle between adjacent pixels of the image in the horizontal, vertical and diagonal direction respectively, a 3D information statistical model was then constructed. This model reflects the similarity between adjacent pixels which represent some kind of materials. Uniform areas and edge information of the same material, which will be used for the training sample collection in supervised classification, can be extracted from the image if different threshold values are set and slices are extracted from different axes in the statistical model. Compared with the traditional statistical tools, such as the histogram and scatter diagram, this statistical method has higher robustness and reliability. And it can obtain more information extracted from the spectral images.

Ammonia modification for flotation separation of polycarbonate and polystyrene waste plastics.

A promising method, ammonia modification, was developed for flotation separation of polycarbonate (PC) and polystyrene (PS) waste plastics. Ammonia modification has little effect on flotation behavior of PS, while it changes significantly that of PC. The PC recovery in the floated product drops from 100% to 3.17% when modification time is 13min and then rises to 100% after longer modification. The mechanism of ammonia modification was studied by contact angle, and Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) measurements. Contact angle of PC indicates the decline of PC recovery in the floated product is ascribed to an increase in surface wettability. FT-IR and XPS spectra suggest that ammonia modification causes chemical reactions occurred on PC surface. Flotation behavior of ammonia-modified PC and PS was investigated with respect to flotation time, frother concentration and particle sizes. Flotation separation of PC and PS waste plastics was conducted based on the flotation behavior of single plastic. PC and PS mixtures with different particle sizes are separated efficiently, implying that the technology possesses superior applicability to particle sizes of plastics. The purity of PS and PC is up to 99.53% and 98.21%, respectively, and the recovery of PS and PC is larger than 92.06%. A reliable, cheap and effective process is proposed for separation of PC and PS waste plastics.

Interfacial interactions between plastic particles in plastics flotation.

Plastics flotation used for recycling of plastic wastes receives increasing attention for its industrial application. In order to study the mechanism of plastics flotation, the interfacial interactions between plastic particles in flotation system were investigated through calculation of Lifshitz-van der Waals (LW) function, Lewis acid-base (AB) Gibbs function, and the extended Derjaguin-Landau-Verwey-Overbeek potential energy profiles. The results showed that van der Waals force between plastic particles is attraction force in flotation system. The large hydrophobic attraction, caused by the AB Gibbs function, is the dominant interparticle force. Wetting agents present significant effects on the interfacial interactions between plastic particles. It is found that adsorption of wetting agents promotes dispersion of plastic particles and decreases the floatability. Pneumatic flotation may improve the recovery and purity of separated plastics through selective adsorption of wetting agents on plastic surface. The relationships between hydrophobic attraction and surface properties were also examined. It is revealed that there exists a three-order polynomial relationship between the AB Gibbs function and Lewis base component. Our finding provides some insights into mechanism of plastics flotation.

Flotability and flotation separation of polymer materials modulated by wetting agents.

The surface free energy, surface tension and contact angles were performed to investigate the properties of wetting agents. Adsorption of wetting agents changes wetting behavior of polymer resins. Flotability of polymer materials modulated by wetting agents was studied, and wetting agents change significantly flotability of polymer materials. The flotability decreases with increasing the concentration of wetting agents, and the wetting ability is lignin sulfonate (LS)>tannic acid (TA)>methylcellulose (MC)>triton X-100 (TX-100) (from strong to weak). There is significant difference in the flotability between polymer resins and plastics due to the presence of additives in the plastics. Flotation separation of two-component and multicomponent plastics was conducted based on the flotability modulated by wetting agents. The two-component mixtures can be efficiently separated using proper wetting agent through simple flotation flowsheet. The multicomponent plastic mixtures can be separated efficiently through multi-stage flotation using TA and LS as wetting agents, and the purity of separated component was above 94%, and the recovery was more than 93%.