Vapes, Lithium & Fires: AI Steps In at the Recycling Line | Dawn News English

Описание: From phones and toys to laptops and power tools, lithium‑ion batteries are everywhere. If they slip into residual waste or mixed recycling they can cause fires when damaged in refuse trucks or on processing lines.

A new AI vision system is helping to spot and remove many types of batteries from refuse before they can cause a problem, according to the developers.

UK start-up LionVision has installed an artificial intelligence (AI) system at SWEEEP Kuusakoski's electricals-recycling plant in Sittingbourne in south-east England to spot and remove loose batteries from the waste stream, aiming to cut fire risks and recover valuable materials.

The camera-led tool scans moving conveyors and flags items such as lithium-ion cells and disposable vapes for removal via an an air-ejection bar that shoots a jet of compressed air to knock the identified battery out of the waste stream. SWEEEP is deploying the system as part of wider automation at its Kent site to improve safety and yield from waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE), according to the recycler.

"We're always looking at the data that we're collecting, detecting and how we can improve that. So new batteries might come through different brands that we would then build back in to our training data in order to deploy new models that can detect different brands of batteries, for example. Or even different types of batteries; whether it's cylinder batteries, or soft-pack batteries that you might find in laptops," explained Lion Vision's machine learning engineer, George Hawkins.

LionVision developed the technology with support from University of Manchester researchers and UK innovation funding, according to the university.

Battery incidents have become a growing operational concern at sorting facilities as damaged cells can ignite under pressure.

"If the wrong thing happens to it when it's no longer wanted, and that's if it goes into a bin, it gets crushed, it comes into contact with air and water, they can set on fire. And when they go, they go big," said Scott Butler from Material Focus.

"We've seen in the UK significant increases in fires associated with vapes and batteries and hidden batteries inside electricals."

Material Focus, a UK non-profit leading the UK's recycle electricals recycling campaign, estimates households throw away about 103,000 tonnes of electricals annually and are storing around 880 million unused items, with nearly £1 billion worth of precious and critical metals lost when products are not recycled.

"Geopolitics is at play here... inside electronics are precious metals, materials like lithium, cobalt, technology metals," said Butler. "And we've got them here in the urban mines surrounding us. And at the moment, we're throwing too many of them away, which is crazy."

The rise of low-cost "fast tech" such as earbuds, chargers and disposable vapes is accelerating the trend, with Britons buying an estimated 1.14 billion such items a year and binning more than half, according to Material Focus.

"Vapocalypse is what we called it, and basically that's triggering all these fires, all this risk to public workers, to property, to land. And yeah, we were caught out and I think the important thing is as a sector, as a group of people interested in this, we need to be ready for the next vape," Butler added.

Advocates say better front‑end sorting could boost recovery of precious and critical materials — from gold and palladium to rare earth elements used in magnets — and cut reliance on new imports.

The push comes as the industry marks International E‑Waste Day on Oct. 14 2025, an awareness campaign coordinated by the WEEE Forum, a Brussels‑based industry association for e‑waste producer‑responsibility schemes.

#AI #Recycling #EWaste #LithiumIon #Vapes #UKTech #Innovation #Environment #Sustainability #CircularEconomy #RareEarths #TechNews #WasteManagement #GreenTech #LionVision #UniversityOfManchester #SWEEEPKuusakoski #MaterialFocus #InternationalEWasteDay
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dawn News English is your window into the latest news, insight, and features from South Asia and beyond.

Official Facebook:   / dawndotcom  
Official Twitter:   / dawn_com  
Website: www.dawn.com
Official Instagram:   / dawnnewsenglish  

#news #latestnews #dawnnewsenglish #dawnnews