Design and production of an automatic solid waste sorting machine with smart digital counter

Abstract

Sorting of objects is the first step of a waste management process. These objects should be sorted according to the type of material for effective waste recycling. Therefore, the focus of this work is to design and produce an automated sorting machine that can be used to sort metals and non-metals autonomously. The automatic sorting machine with a smart digital counter was designed to use a microcontroller (Arduino Mega) to control the conveyor systems which consist of the conveyor support, driving unit and the driven unit. The sorting mechanisms consist of the inductive sensor, infrared Sensor and the actuating system using servo motor. The conveyor system helps in the conveyance of objects towards the sorting chute. The actuating system receives signal from the microcontroller and the device does the sorting of the objects based on their characteristics while the digital counter counts the number of metallic objects dropping into the designated cart. The time taken for the inductive sensor to sense an object, the waiting period for the servo motor to be actuated and the time taken for the counter to count after a metallic object is sensed are 1s, 2s and 1s respectively. After its development, it was tested and observed to meet the design requirements.