An image-based approach for the mass flow measurement of plastic granules as an alternative solution to loss-in-weight feeding systems

Advanced loss-in-weight systems are widely used for feeding operations to achieve high performance in several plastics manufacturing processes. However, these devices are expensive and unsuitable for dosing small batches of materials. Moreover, custom solutions are needed for those applications where extruders are operated in flood-fed conditions. Therefore, an image-based system for the mass flow measurement of plastic granules was developed and discussed in this work. Experimental data were collected to evaluate the performance of the proposed method. This approach exhibited high accuracy (± 1%) when dosing different batches, proving the image-based system suitable for production.