Track: Environmental Engineering

Abstract

The haphazard industrial waste management of the industries located on the banks of the rivers is seen as a cause of the South Asian region's rivers becoming polluted. Densely populated areas also get polluted from improper management of trash collection by the government. There on the rivers, the Energy Efficient River Surface Floating Plastic Trash Cleaning and Oil Soaking Robot can be used to clean the floating trash from the river surface and can simultaneously soak the oil from the river water. This robot uses river skimmer technology to filter floating trash from the river's edge. The robot's forearms are attached to an oil-absorbing hydrophobic melamine sponge material, which allows the floating robot to absorb oil from river water. The design and construction of this robot for cleaning and soaking up oil are discussed in this paper. The floating trash that comes with the tide is blocked by the hands of this machine. The filtered trash is then collected by a cleated conveyor belt controlled by an Arduino UNO R3 SMD microcontroller. Using a CM30-25NPP-EC1 Capacitive Proximity Sensor, this cleated conveyor belt separates plastic waste. The sensing end of the sensor emits an electrical field from 4mm up to 25mm, in order to detect the plastic trash. Throughout this experiment, the design of hardware orientation and software operation for the robot’s operation is explained with construction. The eminent idiosyncrasies can also be used for future skimmer technology based robots, which will be capable of completing tasks with complex functionality.