The rising population of India poses serious threats with regard to the availability of living space, utilization of natural resources and raw materials, education and employment. But another serious peril that follows is the escalating amount of waste generated each minute by an individual. Every city is grappling with the menace of ever increasing waste. An astounding 0.1 million tonnes of waste is generated each day in our country. Sadly, only 5% of this colossal amount of waste is recycled. In India, the collection, transportation and disposal of MSW are unscientific and chaotic. Uncontrolled dumping of waste on outskirts of towns and cities has created overflowing landfills which are not only impossible to reclaim because of the haphazard manner of dumping but also has serious environmental implications. When viewed on a larger scale, the poor recovery rate has impeded the growth of the country as well as the economy of the nation.
One possible solution for this problem could be segregating the waste at the disposal level itself. We have thus come up with an Automatic waste segregator that categorizes the waste as wet, dry or metal. An 8051 microcontroller forms the heart of the system. Inductive proximity sensor is used to detect if the waste is a metal. Wet and dry waste can be distinguished based on their weight. A high speed blower system is used to blow dry waste off the belt while most of the wet waste remains. It then falls off as the belt rotates and is collected later. This cost effective system is particularly suitable for installation in apartments and colonies. It is now time to give back to Mother Nature. Therefore to set the ball rolling, we have proposed this project to give back to our nation, making our India a ‘SwachhBharath’. Ready to convert trash to cash?
Objectives
A trend of significant increase in municipal solid waste generation has been recorded worldwide. This has been found due to over population growth rate, industrialization, urbanization and economic growth which have ultimately resulted in increased solid waste generation.
Final destination of solid waste in India is disposal. Most urban solid waste in Indian cities and towns is landfilled and dumped.
Our Project deals with the most blistering topic i.e. waste segregation. An efficacious management needs to be materialized for better planet to live in. Hence, with our cost effective project proposal, we try to bring in the change.It deals with the minimization of blue-collar method utilization for exclusion of waste into an automated panache. An automation of this style not only saves the manual segregators of the numerous health issues, but also proves to be economical to the nation. Besides, this system utilizes low cost components for the successful segregation of most types of waste. When installed in apartments or small colonies, it proves to be beneficial in sorting the waste at the site of disposal itself. This is the objective of our project.
Methodology
Given below is a view of the Automatic waste segregator model.
- Open Close Mechanism:
- Inductive Proximity Sensor:
- Slider section:
The open close mechanism acts as a regulator to control the waste that falls on the belt. A 12V DC geared motor receives inputs from microcontroller to monitor the clockwise and anti clockwise motion of the motor. This mechanism is initiated only if the IR sensor detects a waste in its vicinity.
An inductive proximity sensor based on the eddy current principle suitable for detecting buried conductive targets has been used. Three 12V inductive proximity sensors are used to detect if the incoming waste is metallic or not. This is fed as input to the microcontroller.
As and when the inductive proximity sensors detect a metallic waste, a slider movement is initiated which sweeps the waste away after it falls on the belt. Permanent magnets within the metallic bin aid in sorting magnetic metals from non-magnetic ones.
Scope for future work:
An efficient waste management system is the need of the hour. This automatic waste segregator is one small step towards building an efficacious and economic waste collection system with minimum amount of human intervention. However as is the case with many automated system, this system also has a few limitations.
LIMITATIONS
- Segregation of the waste consumes time.
- Size of the waste must be less than or equal to the dimension of the funnel mouth size i.e. 20cm X 20cm
- The magnetic metals attached to the permanent magnets must be scraped out manually from the metallic bin.
FUTURE SCOPE:
- Inlet section can be incorporated with a crusher mechanism to reduce the size of the incoming waste.
- Inlet section can also be integrated with a blower mechanism to dehumidify the waste input in the system.
- Provisions can be made for on spot decomposition of wet waste.
- GSM contraption to intimate to the nearest industry to use the metals collected.
- Plastics can be segregated from the collected dry waste and also be processed based on their types, grades and colors. Thus further separation of dry waste can also be done.