The aim of the Project AUTSORT – Automatic Textile Sorting is to investigate a sorting system of textile materials applying Near Infrared Spectroscopy (NIR), in order to facilitate the recycling process of post-consumer textile residues. The project contributes to promote a more circular and sustainable textile industry, improving the recycling of post-consumer textile residues, according to the European directive from 2018 (Directive (EU) 2018/851).

For its future implementation, this system should be developed from a perspective of an industrial scale-up. That is to say, the developed system should be modular for a subsequent application on industrial sorting machinery, both for existing and new designs.

To achieve that, it is necessary to develop powerful mathematical models to treat NIR spectres, allowing the classification of the textile fibres in different groups. Models will be developed based on multivariate statistical analysis and convolutional neural network.