In the coming decades, thousands of aircraft are due to be retired and dismantled. Other than components to be re-used, substantial parts of aircraft are stripped and shredded. Whereas todays technologies such as XRF work well in many respects, XRF is unable to properly identify aircraft composites, penetrate coatings and XRF is also costly.

This proposal modified and refined LIBS spectroscopy devices to demonstrate their capability to robustly identify aerospace composites, also when subject to ageing and coating.

LIBS is a well-established spectroscopy technique outside the aerospace domain. It works by shining a laser beam on a sample and identifying the atomic emission.

TNO has access to a handful of different LIBS devices to perform the feasibility study. To enforce industrial, economic and operational realism, we brought companies AELS and Avantes as subcontractors. Both were very active and well-established in European recycling networks. TNO also brought a relevant industrial network to support further industrial development of a portable LIBS device.