Patent ID: 7202434

Claim:
A method of sorting granules within a bulk of granules, having an inherent variation, from a heterogeneous population by sorting from said bulk at least three classes of granules, having less variation than said inherent variation, which represents a quality of composition with reference to any organic material of said granules, wherein the method comprises the steps of: (a) distributing each of said granules to be sorted as a separate granule in a sorting device; (b) exposing said separate granule to energy from at least one energy source; (c) recording a first multivariate signal from at least one point of each separate granule by means of at least one sensor; (d) estimating a magnitude of a second signal, by means of a calibration model previously obtained by means of a multivariate calibration method previously performed on a subset of said population between said first multivariate signal and said quality of composition, the second signal estimating the magnitude of at least one quality variable of inherent, univariate variation; and (e) sorting said granules by said sorting device to at least three collected classes in dependence on the magnitude of said second signal; wherein said first multivariate signal is recorded for a time period of less than 5 ms, at any point of said separate granule.