Patent ID: 7918343

Claim:
A system for recovering mixed color cullet from waste material comprising: (i) a feed hopper to receive waste material; wherein the waste material comprises mixed color cullet, ferrous material, non-ferrous metal material, and ceramic material; and wherein the mixed color cullet comprises green glass, flint glass and amber glass; (ii) a ferrous separator to remove the ferrous material from the waste material; (iii) an eddy-current separator configured to separate conductive and non-conductive materials within the waste material, wherein the conductive particles are removed from waste material by at least one of a rotating drum or a belt enveloping the rotating drum; (iv) a ceramic detector and separator to remove ceramic material from the waste material; (v) a shaker-feeder, positioned downstream of the eddy-current separator, configured to remove bulk moisture from the waste material; (vi) a plurality of optical sorters configured to image and simultaneously sort the waste material in accordance with at least one glass color; (vii) a crusher configured to selectively reduce a portion of the waste material to a specific size; and (viii) an output hopper to receive the mixed color cullet.