JOURNAL OF INFORMATION, KNOWLEDGE AND RESEARCH IN

ELECTRONICS AND COMMUNICATION ENGINEERING

ISSN: 0975 – 6779| NOV 16 TO OCT 17 | VOLUME – 04, ISSUE – 02

Automated Waste Segregator

Ashwini D. Awale¹, Akshada A. Margaje², Akshay B. Jagdale3
Shree Chhatrapati Shivajiraje College of Engineering Dhangawadi, Pune,India.
Department of E &TC Engineering,
¹[email protected]
²[email protected]
3
[email protected]

ABSTRACT:

One of the main concerns with our environment has been solid waste management which in addition to disturbing the
balance of environment also has adverse effect on health of the society. Effective waste management is one of the
major problems of the present era. The segregation, handling, transportation and disposal of waste are to be properly
managed so as to minimize the risk to the environment. The economical value of waste is best realized when it
segregated. The traditional way of manually segregating the waste utilizes more human effort, time and cost. This work
proposes An Economic Automated Waste Segregator (AWS) which is cheap and easy to use solution for a segregation
system at households, so that it can be sent directly for processing. It is designed to sort the refuse into metallic waste,
wetwaste, drywaste, plastic waste.

KEYWORDS: Automation, Economic, waste segregation, inductive sensing, metal detection.

into compost or methane-gas or both. Compost can

replace demand for chemical fertilizers, and biogas
1. INTRODUCTION can be used as a source of energy. The metallic
waste could be reused or recycled.
We design a paper on “AUTOMATED WASTE
SEGREGATOR”. The rising population of India Even though there are large scale industrial waste
poses serious threats with regard to the availability segregators present, it is always much better to
of living space, utilization of natural resources and segregate the waste at the source itself. The
raw materials, education and employment. But benefits of doing so are that a higher quality of
another serious peril that follows is the escalating material is retained for recycling which means that
amount of waste generated each minute by more value could be recovered from the waste [3].
an individual. Every city is grappling with the The occupational hazard for waste workers is
menace of ever increasing waste. An astounding reduced. Also, the segregated waste could be
0.1 million tons of waste is generated each day in directly sent it to the segregation plant then to the
our country. Sadly, only 5% of this recycling plant.
colossal amount of waste is recycled. In India, the
collection, transportation and disposal of MSW Currently there is no system of segregation of dry,
are unscientific and chaotic. Uncontrolled dumping wet, plastic and metallic waste at household level.
of waste on outskirts of towns and cities J.S.Bajaj[4:12] has recommended that a last cost
has created overflowing landfills which are not most appropriate technological option for safe
only impossible to reclaim because of the management should be developed the purpose of
haphazard manner of dumping but also has serious this project is the realization of compact, low cost
environmental implications. One possible solution and user friendly segregation system for urban
for this problem could be segregating the waste at household to streamline the waste management
the disposal level itself. When the waste is process.
segregated into basics streams such as wet, dry,
metallic, plastic, the waste has higher potential of
recovery, and consequently, recycled and reused. A. Technical Background
The wet waste fraction is often converted either

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 JOURNAL OF INFORMATION, KNOWLEDGE AND RESEARCH IN
ELECTRONICS AND COMMUNICATION ENGINEERING
ISSN: 0975 – 6779| NOV 16 TO OCT 17 | VOLUME – 04, ISSUE – 02
The mixed waste is sorted based on the following conveyer belt and segregate into different bins with
methods at the industrial level[5]. Large items are the help of hydraulic cylinder flaps. The entire
removed by manual sorting. Then the refuse is system is controlled by a programmable logic
sorted based on its size by using large rotating controller.
drums which smaller then the diameter of the holes
will be to drop through, but large particles will S.M.Dudhal [3] describes paper deals with waste
remain in the drum. segregation using programmable logic controller.
The system is developed for separating out metal
For metallic objects electromagnets or eddy current from waste materials. The system consists of an
based separators can be used. Near infrared automatic feed system trough which waste fed into
scanners are used to differentiate between various a conveyor belt, sensors and a robotic arm to which
types of plastics based on the ability of the an electromagnet is attached will extract the metal
materials to reflect light. X-rays can also be used to from the waste and will deposit it into a bin.
segregate materials based on their density.
Ruveena Singh [4] describes about a smart waste
B.Proposed Solution sorting which automatically segregate waste into
two categories namely degradable and
Waste is pushed through a flap into the proposed biodegradable wastes. The proposed system
system. An IR proximity sensor detects this and consists of lid, on which the waste material is
starts the entire system. Waste then falls on the placed. There is a sensor which transmits the
metal detection system. This system is used to signals and that signal received by the
detect metallic waste. After this the object falls into microcontroller, depending on the signal is
the capacitive sensing module. This module received the lid of system works and put the waste
distinguishes between wet and dry waste. After this into corresponding bin.
the object falls into LDR+LASER for sensing
plastic waste. After the identification of waste, a 3.IMPLEMENTATION
circular base which holds containers for dry. Wet
and metallic waste is rotated. The collapsible flap is Figure 1 shows a block diagram of the AWS. The
lowered once the container corresponding to the main goal of the project is to design and develop a
type of garbage is positioned under it. The waste sorting system that sorts and waste automatically
falls into the container and the flap is raised. The into four categories namely metal waste, wet waste,
waste in the containers now can be collected dry waste and glass waste. An upper enclosure
separately and sent for further processing. waste does not fall out of the sensing area. Inside
the enclosure is an infrared (IR) proximity sensor
C.Organization of the paper module. When the waste is dumped in by pushing
the flap, the IR proximity sensor module gets
The paper is organized as follows: section III activated and brings the micro controller LPC2138
encompasses the design methodology of the AWS, out of low power mode. The system starts when the
which has a detailed description of each waste is pushed through a flap into the inclined
implementation of each block. Section IV contains plane having the inductive proximity sensor. The
the results of experiments performed to show the object slides over the incline to fall on the
performance of the various blocks of the AWS. inductance coil which is used to sense any metal
Section V has the concluding remarks of the object. If the object is metallic a change in parallel
project. resonant impedance of the metal detection system
is observed. If the object is not a metal it continues
2. RELATED WORKS and drops into the capacitive sensing module. In
M.K. Pushpa [1] describes paper about capacitive sensing the property used for
microcontroller based automatic waste segregator. segregation of waste is the relative dielectric
constant. Once a dielectric is introduced between
The proposed system uses an inductive proximity
plates of the capacitor the capacitance increases.
sensor to detect metal waste and blower mechanism
Wet has a higher relative dielectric constant than
to segregate between wet and dry wastes. A simple
that of the dry waste because of moisture, oil and
8051 microcontroller forms the heart of the system.
It controls the working and timing of the entire sub fat, content present in kitchen waste. For detecting
a glass waste here we are used LDR+LASER
sections.
sensing module. The light dependent resistors
Subhasini Dwivedi [2] proposes a solid waste which changes resistance according to light
treatment plant for separating plastic, glass bottles intensity. Normally the resistance of photo resistor
and metal cans from solid waste material. The decreases with increasing intensity of light falling
system uses different capacitive, proximity sensors on it. A laser diode is an electrically pumped
to detect each object which is moving on a semiconductor laser in which the active medium is

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 JOURNAL OF INFORMATION, KNOWLEDGE AND RESEARCH IN
ELECTRONICS AND COMMUNICATION ENGINEERING
ISSN: 0975 – 6779| NOV 16 TO OCT 17 | VOLUME – 04, ISSUE – 02
formed by a p-n junction of a semiconductor eddy currents are a function of the distance, size,
diode similar to that found in a light-emitting surface area and composition of the target. This
diode. The laser diode is the most common type of generates a magnetic field which opposes the
laser produced. The two dc geared motor are used original magnetic field which is generated by the
in our project. The dc motor works on 12v. To coil. The inductive coupling between the coil and
drive a dc motor, we need a dc motor driver called the object creates a mutual inductance effect on the
L293D. This dc motor driver is capable of driving coil which decreases the parallel resonant
2 dc motors at a time. In order to protect the dc impedance of the circuit which in turn is reflected
motor from a back EMF generated by the dc motor by an increase in the proximity count value.
while changing the direction of rotation, the dc Magnetic fields do not affect the metal detection
motor driver have an internal protection suit. system. It can detect any conducting material
irrespective of its magnetic properties. The waste
continues down the incline towards the capacitive
sensing module.
POWER SUPPLY

C. capacitive sensing module

Two pairs of copper cladded electrodes of size

IR SENSOR LCD
10*7 cm are placed along the walls of the structure
which are inclined to each other at an angle of 60°.
This arrangement is made to ensure that waste of
all sizes can be sensed. The area between each pair
CAPACITIVE DC MOTOR of plates increases as it moves away from the apex
LPC
SENSOR 1INPUT
VALVE
of the structure. The sensitivity of the plate
2138 decreases with its increase in area, hence smaller
METAL
plates would accurately sense objects of smaller
DETECTOR size. Even though the sensitivity of the larger plate
DC is decreased, it is designed to detect larger objects
MOTOR2
which will yield a change sufficient to be
LDR+LASER GARBAGE identified. The property used for segregation of
GLASS ROTATION waste is the relative dielectric constant. Once a
DETECTOR MECHANIS
dielectric is introduced between the plates the
resistance value between the plate’s changes and
Fig. 1 Block Diagram of proposed system
subsequently a voltage change is detected. Wet
A. Entry system and initialization waste has a higher relative dielectric constant than
that of dry waste because of the moisture, oil and
The waste is dumped into the AWS by pushing it fat, content present in kitchen waste. If the change
through a flap. This flap comes in the proximity of in the voltage is greater than threshold then the type
the IR proximity sensor which marks the entry of of garbage is inferred as dry waste, else it is wet
the waste. The sensor sends an interrupt to the waste. Thus, the type of waste is identified as either
microcontroller which comes out of the low power wet or dry. The waste continues down the incline
mode. It then initializes the sensor modules. The towards the glass sensing module.
initialization of all modules ensures that any
dynamic changes in the environment do not affect D. Glass sensing module
the sensing.
For the sensing of glass type waste the
B. Metal Detection System LASER+LDR are used. The LASER light is place
at one end and other end the LDR is placed. The
The object moves over the incline and falls on the glass type waste is placed in between these two
inductive coil [1][4]. The inductive coil is a part of laser and LDR. The light is passing through laser
a parallel inductance and capacitance (LC) circuit. light Photo resistors or Light Dependent
This measures the parallel resonance impedance of Resistors (LDR) which change resistance according
a parallel LC circuit and returns data as a proximity to light intensity. Normally the resistance of Photo
value. This data changes whenever another metallic resistor (LDR) decreases with increasing intensity
object is introduced in the vicinity of the coil. of light falling on it. Photomultiplier tubes
containing a photocathode which
When an alternating current is passed through a emits electrons when illuminated, the electrons are
coil it generates a magnetic field [7]. When a then amplified by a chain of dynodes. From the
metallic object is introduced in the vicinity of the output of LDR we can decide the waste is glass
coil, eddy currents are induced on its surface. The type or not.

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ISSN: 0975 – 6779| NOV 16 TO OCT 17 | VOLUME – 04, ISSUE – 02
E. Segregation module Table 1. The result of waste segregation
Wastes Type of waste detected
To achieve the segregation, two dc geared motors Foil paper Metallic waste
[5] are used. The containers are placed on a circular Banana peel Wet waste
base which is mounted on the axle of a servo Lemon Wet waste
motor. The circular base rotates as the axle of the Potato Wet waste
servo motor rotates. If the container corresponding Poly bag Dry waste
to the type of garbage is not under the flap then the Paper Dry waste
motor is rotated clockwise or anticlockwise. The Keys Metallic waste
servo motor is given four different positions or
angles for the four types of wastes detected. The Table 2. Rotation of circular base according to
motor thus always comes to the required position Detected waste
according to the signal obtained. The default bin at
Wastes Angle Movement of
the circular base is the dry bin. To avoid
(in degrees) bin
overshooting of the container due to the momentum
Dry 45 Default
of the base, the servo motor is rotated at lower
Metallic 45 Anti clockwise
speeds by using pulse width modulation (PWM)
Wet 135 Clockwise
which is generated from the microcontroller’s
timer. Once the required container is positioned Glass 135 Anticlockwise
under the flap, a second servo motor lowers the
collapsible flap by rotating the motor clockwise by 6. REFERENCES
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means organic wastes such as vegetable peel, Waste Segregator
garden wastes etc, dry waste include paper wastes,
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pins, foil paper etc. glass waste include frame glass,
glass bottles etc.

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