Ozirma

Project

What is Ozirma ?

The world is facing a dreadful problem: Plastic !

Did you know, only ten percent of the plastic is actually recycled ? When it would technically be possible to recycle 80% of it!

To expand the reach of plastic recyling around the world, some brave initiative already exist. For instance, the Precious Plastic community or Plastic Odyssey. They developped "low tech" and open source machines to transform this "garbage" in valuable objects. They are helping to develop recycled products, crafted by people around the world. The bottleneck is sorting plastic.

Existing solutions are expensive (50k to 100k€), and used by large recycling facilities. Smaller (portable) solutions exist, but still costs around 10k€.

OZIRMA will be able to detect plastics from various types: PE, PP, PET, PS... and allows for better sorting at a lower cost.

InfraRed Spectrometer

OZIRMA uses InfraRed spectroscopy, the same technology found in big recycling factories, but scaled down to fit with fablab/micro-factories capabilities (3D printing, laser cutting, CNC..)

Low Cost

With an accessible price tag, OZIRMA aims to help decentralized and low-tech recycling workshops (like PRECIOUS PLASTIC) to sort all the types of plastic waste

Open-Source

OZIRMA is an open-source-hardware project built solely with open-source softwares. We truly believe that open-source helps spreading and improving projects, and we want to share this tool to help reduce plastic waste !

Team

We are two freelance engineers

Vivien holds a master of engineering in electronic. After working for three years for a company specialized in synthesizers, Vivien decided in 2019 to start its own business, INDUCTIVE BRAIN, in the field of electronic design.

Mejdi holds a master of engineering in optical science, after which he specialized in optical spectroscopy. From 2012 to 2017 he was CEO of ARCHIMEJ TECHNOLOGY, a start-up who developed a disruptive spectrometer for blood chemistry analysis. The current designs of IMPACT PHOTONICS are a significant improvement on this initial project, while being completely independent. Mejdi is also an active member of the fablabs & maker-space communities. In 2018 he graduate from MIT's FABACADEMY program.

In 2017, Platic Odyssey and Mejdi NCIRI come up with a concept to reduce the cost of IR spectrometers for plastic identification. It will use newly available SWIR componants (cheap LEDs and Photodiode). Since January 2020, Vivien and Mejdi are working together to improve the prototype, and release a fully functionnal sensor.

Vivien Henry

Hardware Engineer

Mejdi Nciri

Optical Engineer

Progress

Ozirma is already a working spectrometer; We made three series of prototypes, and we can obtain spectrums. A study is in progress to evaluate the capabilities of the machine. The approach is consistent with the technology used in the existing spectromers. We are working on algorithmes to improve results.

We got some spectra for some plastics. But almost no signal for sample that are too dark or too translucid (especially thin-film) While using all the tricks of averaging, denoising and deconvolution we are very close to the limit of detection. We still need to increase SNR to detect broader spectral bands on opaque plastics and/or see some signal on dark plastics.