Role of Electrical Drives in an Automatic Waste Segregator Plant

This paper describes about the functioning of Automatic Waste Segregator plant and the role played by the electrical drives in such plants. A prototype of this plant has been developed with a view of having the ability to expand such that not just waste from a single house gets segregated but the wastes of a locality or perhaps a city also. For such large scale industrialization of plants such as these, control of motors and drives is most important. The working of the prototype of this plant is brought about by the use of sensors such as ultrasonic sensors, moisture sensor, infrared sensor and metal sensors. It is capable of separating wastes into wet waste, dry wastes and metallic wastes. The prototype also has a conveyer belt and a motor on which a platform which has bins attached to it are mounted. The prototype uses DC motors, for a plant which should be capable of handling large quantities of waste advanced drives and motors are required. The requirements and possible drives and motors for such large scale operation are also discussed in this paper.