The Fabrication and Testing of Motorized Shredder for Biodegradable Materials

Abstract

The public market in the City of Batac has an average of 40 trips to the city's sanitary landfill for biowastes alone. Burying organic waste in landfill is a big problem. In all the cities and places, organic waste is dumped or disposed of in a landfill or discarded, which causes public health hazards and diseases like malaria, cholera, typhoid. Inadequate management of wastes like unlimited dumping bears several adverse consequences. It is not only polluting groundwater and surface through leachate but also promotes the breeding of flies, mosquitoes, rats and other disease-bearing vectors (SEPO, 2017). This inspired the researchers to fabricate and test the motorized shredding machine. It also aimed to determine the maximum speed in shredding selected biodegradable wastes. Thus, solving the problem of the City of Batac. The study employed qualitative analysis that focused on the performance of the fabricated machine. The fabricated motorized shredding machine is composed of base (angle bar, flat bar, knot and bolts, switch, and AC motor) frame (shafts, blades, belt, and pulley, galvanized steels, bearings) chute (galvanized steel) hopper (square bar, and angle bar, and galvanized steel). The motorized shredding machine was designed to run by electricity as its main source of power. The selected biodegradable waste for testing was tomatoes, kangkong, eggplant, cornhusk, dried mahogany leaves, and fresh mahogany leaves. Each biowaste weighed 2 kilograms. Results showed that tomatoes were shredded the fastest (18 s) followed by kangkong (21 s), then dried mahogany leaves (27 s), fresh mahogany leaves (29 s), eggplants (52 s), and lastly cornhusk (3 mins 37 s). In terms of cut size, the dried mahogany leaves were shredded the finest (0.2 cm) followed by fresh mahogany leaves (0.4 cm), then kangkong (1 cm), tomatoes (2.4 cm), cornhusk (4.2 cm), and lastly eggplants (6.3 cm). Thus, the fabricated shredding machine is effective. It is therefore recommended that bigger electric motor be used for greater yield. The distance between blades should be shorter for finer yield, and wheels must be attached to the legs for portability.