SeeGlass award

In June 2016, PICVISA was awarded a major European grant under the R&D programme H2020 for the development of artificial vision technology aimed at improving glass recycling – an initiative that became known as the SeeGlass project.

Artificial vision equipment

The SeeGlass project focused on developing artificial vision equipment capable of identifying and sorting glass with greater precision than existing technology, addressing one of the key bottlenecks in producing high-quality cullet for the glass manufacturing industry: the presence of contaminants such as ceramics, stones and porcelain that are visually similar to glass but have different properties when melted.

By combining advanced sensors with dedicated processing algorithms, the equipment developed under SeeGlass was designed to detect these contaminants at high speed, removing them from the glass stream before it reaches the furnace. This kind of precision sorting is what allows recovered glass to be used in higher proportions when manufacturing new glass containers, reducing the energy and raw materials required compared with production from virgin sand and minerals.

The SeeGlass award reflects the broader role that European R&D funding has played in advancing recycling technology – supporting the kind of long-term development work that has gone on to underpin commercial sorting systems like PICVISA's ECOGLASS range.

Discover ECOGLASS optical sorting