Moisture Sensing Unit for Waste Sorter Machine

Tremendous amount of waste is being produced with the rapid increase in population and industrialization. Collection, segregation, transportation and disposal of this waste is a chaotic process. Disposal of untreated waste into water bodies or huge landfills and incinerating of waste can lead to severe environmental degradation such as water contaminated water, unhealthy soils and polluted air. Hence proper waste management is the need of the hour for the ecological sustainable development of many countries. The generated waste gets economic value only if it is segregated in an efficient manner. The waste can be sorted into dry, wet and metallic waste. The dry and metallic waste can be recycled and reused whereas the wet waste which includes biodegradable organic waste can be used to form compost. This paper proposes an easy way to detect wet waste using a moisture sensor from a set of waste which does not include metallic waste. A moisture sensor has been used to sense the moisture contents of the waste; if the moisture content is above a preset threshold value then the waste is wet waste.