ReWaste F- Digitalization in waste management

As part of a research project, universities in Upper Styria are working on a smart solution for waste management. The University of Leoben and other partners from industry as well as various funding bodies such as the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) have been working on this topic since 2017. The Institute of Industrial Management is also making its contribution to research and providing support in finding suitable technologies. As part of ReWaste F (Recycling and utilization of waste for the future), employees of FH Joanneum and students have already developed possible sensor concepts for the detection of impurities in recycling plants. Some of these concepts have already been validated with test setups. A second contribution of the FH Joanneum is the research and application of a suitable standard to network the individual units of a waste treatment plant, to ensure their communication and to control them via a process control level. At the Institute of Industrial Management, Sabine Hanusch is now leading the project together with Helmut Ropin as Barbara Mayer's successor and is working on the results with her team consisting of Katharina Lackner and Stefan Wallner.
The results from the research areas are to be applied to the MAYER RECYCLING GmbH plant in the future together with the University of Leoben, as the aim of the entire project is to enable more efficient waste processing by means of digitalization ("Smart Waste Factory"), as this is of enormous current relevance due to the scarcity of raw materials.