Method for sorting post-consumed bottles and apparatus thereof

A method for sorting post-consumed bottles comprising the steps of:

• charging post-consumed bottles having a longitudinal direction, contour, size and color into a hopper where they are randomly mixed, the hopper having a lower side defining a supply port;
• causing the post-consumed bottles to form a row in their longitudinal direction after passing through the supply port provided on the lower side of the hopper while applying a vibration to the hopper thereby moving forward the post-consumed bottles one by one on a supply conveyor;
• separating each post-consumed bottle to have a certain distance between one post-consumed bottle and another by intermittently interrupting a moving flow of the post-consumed bottles by a gate regularly opening and closing on a separation conveyor onto which the moving post-consumed bottles are delivered;
• detecting the contour and size of each post-consumed bottle by processing an image picked up by a first image pickup device comprising one of a first image pickup camera and an ultrasonic displacement sensor on a detection conveyor onto which the separated post-consumed bottle is delivered;
• detecting color at a high speed by picking up an image by a second image pickup device comprising an image pickup camera, the image being defined by data obtained from the contour and size detecting step;
• and
• discharging the used post-consumed bottles of which the size, shape and color have been detected at predetermined positions by comparison with preliminarily established size, shape and color data.