Di-Treatment wastewater for agriculture development.

Treating wastewater from the Textile industry and reuse it in a smart agricultural system that saves water during irrigation.

In this project, we seek to solve two extremely huge problems facing the whole world, which are the greenhouse gases emitted from wasted water from spinning and weaving factories, and the second is wasting water during the irrigation process, and we seek to solve them in one project. In the beginning, these problems are considered the biggest underworld for many countries in the world at present, because of their negative effects on the economic and social growth of any country. Wasted water resulting from textile factories is responsible for 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions, which causes damage to many other aspects such as agriculture, industry, health, and others. And for the second problem, 70% percent of all fresh water on Earth is used in agriculture but unfortunately, 40% percent of this water is wasted due to poor irrigation systems. Of course, a huge number of people are affected as a result of these problems. In my community, we depend heavily on agriculture and some industries, and there is a huge amount of water wasted daily during the irrigation process, which leads to killing cultivated plants or even drowning crops and soil. Some factors lead to these problems, the most important of which are:

1- Spinning and weaving mills dump wastewater after industry into rivers or seas

2- Not treating wastewater before dumping it into the sea, which leads to a lot of emissions

3- Farmers irrigate the soil without knowing the appropriate amount for plants and soil, and this makes them spray water ignorantly, which leads to wasting water.

The negative impacts of these two problems represented in polluting environment reason for containing textile wastewater to toxic, mutagenic, and difficult-to-degrade compounds. Also, 280,000 tons of textile wastewater water are produced every year which leads to polluting the water, soil, and air, and can significantly deplete oxygen levels in bodies of water by blocking light, promoting septic conditions that can lead to human illness and fish kills. Also, wasting water during irrigation can lead to huge negative impacts. Finally, reducing the clean sources of fresh water reason for wasting water during irrigation process. 

First of all, our solution depends on creating a new water source for agriculture, which is treated textile wastewater. Our solution is based on the use of control systems. First, we use Aluminum sulfate and add it to the polluted water as a coagulant to make flocs from pollutants in water, then stirring this mixture with a device we created using DC motor and fan. stirring helps in precipitating the pollutants. then using sand and gravels with various sizes to remove any suspended solids in the water. The final process in the treatment is the activated carbon which can absorb dyes and color from water and store them on its pores. We could put these processes in a closed system which can be controlled using microcontroller (Arduino). The second half of our solution is the smart greenhouse. It consists of soil moisture sensor and water pumps to save water. This sensor can determine if soil needs water or not. If yes, the pump will work automatically for a number of seconds to save water. We created a climate system inside the greenhouse. It consists of two big fans and heat source (bulb). DHT11 sensor can measure the humidity and temperature inside the greenhouse. If the weather is too hot for the plants, the fans will operate automatically to adapt with climatic changes, and if the weather is too cold, the lamps will operate to regulate the temperature. By this way, we can adapt to climate changes and protect crops from their negative effects. Overall, after the water is treated, the pumps pump the treated water a greenhouse reservoir. The filtration process and the greenhouse system can be controlled by human using a mobile app. Finally, our project depends on robotics technology to help us in building such control systems. 

First of all, the target group of our solution is developing countries that do not have large freshwater resources, and their total dependence on food is represented in agriculture. People who live in developing countries need a large amount of fresh water daily to practice their agricultural activity, however, they waste a large amount of water every time they irrigate the land, so it is our role to find a quick, useful, and cheap solution to solve these problems. When applying our solution on the ground, it will achieve tremendous successes, and these are not expectations, but this talk is based on scientific foundations and on experience, as we have tried this solution on a model for the project, and we have planted watercress, and it has consumed a very small amount of water to grow compared to what it consumes Farmers during the irrigation process. Instead of throwing waste water from spinning and weaving factories, these countries will save it and reduce the damages resulting from it through a highly efficient self-treatment system and then use the treated water in smart greenhouses with large sizes work with IOT and save water.

In the beginning, our skills can be summarizer in programming, hardware skills and searching. We used our knowledge in programming to program our system. For hardware, we used it to connect all the devices in a closed system under one circuit. But first, to learn a lot about the problems facing the world, we searched on the Internet and delved into water problems and their impact on our society, especially agriculture, and after determining the water that will be treated, we needed to meet real people to benefit from their experiences in the field of water treatment, so we went to Ezz Steel factories In Egypt, we established a dialogue with engineers to know the best methods of water treatment and the most effective ways to save money in these processes, and this is what we applied in our project. For the technical part, we learned a lot about robotics and how to program systems in a special course for a company in Egypt, and in the end we used what we learned in building our project and programming the greenhouse system using the C programming language through codes, which can be considered as commands for all system devices to work in the best possible condition. All these situations in our life gave us a great background in our field to be able to serve our community by doing a project like that which can be applied in real life.

In fact, to ensure the success of our idea, we have made many visits to many factories, the most important of which is the Ezz Steel Factory, which is one of the largest iron and steel factories in Egypt and the Middle East. In the beginning, we passed the big melting furnaces and saw how the polluted water comes out of the industry, and then we passed a lot of different treatment methods from the beginning of the exit of polluted water to its treatment and reuse. To find out the extent to which our society is affected by these problems, we made some visits to many farmers and found wasting huge amounts of water, which leads to plant death and a decrease in the amount of fresh water. For these reasons, we thought about making a solution that links the two problems which represent filtering the wastewater from the textile industry and reusing it in a smart agricultural system that prevents wasting water.

First, the novelty of our project lies in solving two major issues that face our world in one project which them:

• 1-Wasting 40% of the freshwater used in agriculture during the irrigation process.
• 2-The negative impacts of the textile industry wastewater.

Therefore, our solution treats wastewater exiting from the textile industry and reuses It in a smart agricultural system that saves water during irrigation. Also, the main factor that makes our solution unique is that we are entering technology in our project that represents a microcontroller Arduino to organize the irrigation process inside the greenhouse. The features of our project, they represented in:

• 1-The cost required for the total project is low especially, the filtration
• 2-We can grow plants all year with saving as much water as possible
• 3-Saving time and effort for farmers because this project is a self-working system
• 4-Using IOT to control all devices inside the greenhouse by using the mobile application in the future.
• 5-Reusing the wastewater instead of dropping it in the rivers.

So, all of these features make the products have a high quality so, when the farmer plants the seeds with more water it needs, They will die, but in this project, we give the plant only the amount it needs which led to not die of plants and producing plants with high quality and less water consumed.

There are different goals that we strive to achieve continuously, but the goals for the coming year are of a special nature, as we hope that this project will spread and build it in the real life to ensure its success and provide the largest possible amount of fresh water during irrigation, in addition to getting rid of polluted water resulting from spinning and weaving factories by recycling and using them in an integrated system that works self-growing plants and saves water. To achieve these goals, we avoided random work, and we set future plans that we will work on. The first step is to start implementing the project on the farmers of my village to calculate its efficiency and compare water consumption before and after using the project. Secondly, after making sure of its success, we will work on marketing it and selling the system in the markets, in addition to its development. And work on many versions.

In fact, our solution in the first and last place depends on robotics and programming technology. Robotics is a branch of engineering that involves the conception, design, manufacture and operation of robots and control systems. The objective of the robotics field is to create intelligent machines that can assist humans in a variety of ways and fields like agriculture in our solution. This field is getting bigger year by year. It involves nanotechnology, mechatronics and many other fields. In our project, we used this technology to understand how to create a system with high-quality devices and able to be controlled in agriculture. We used it to connect all the electronic devices and sensors together under the control of one microcontroller which is Arduino. This technology helped us to enable people to control the smart greenhouse and water treatment device through a mobile application. In fact, this technology helped us a lot in our work to make it better. Second, computer programming is the process of writing code to facilitate specific actions in a computer, application or software program, and instructs them on how to perform. We used programming technology to make codes for our system. Without them, we can’t form conditions or commands for our system. So, finally, there is no doubt that these two technologies have significant role in our project, and can be considered as the future of our world. 

In fact, our solution is still under development until obtaining sufficient capital to establish an institution capable of offering copies of our project (the smart greenhouse), but the number of people who will be served will gradually increase over time, as it is expected that our project will serve 1000 farmers in Our village at the beginning of the new year, and then we expand the matter so that our solution serves about 8.5 million farmers in our country, Egypt. If our project achieves the expected benefit and impressive success, it is expected that our project will serve millions of farmers in developing countries that depend entirely on agriculture. This is to increase crop productivity and save as much water as possible, in addition to reducing pollution

In fact, there is no solution without barriers. Without barriers, we can’t make our solution better. In fact, there are some barriers which stand as stone in the road of our solution success. The first barrier is the financial aid. We need a lot of money to develop our solution, to make it applicable in real life. Money can help us to make copies of our project and build a company to help farmers in our community, then helping farmers in all growing countries around the world. The second barrier can be classified as technical. Engineering consulting will greatly help us to improve our project and focus on its shortcomings to improve them. The improvement of our capabilities in programming and the field of robotics will help us a lot in developing our project as much as possible. After overcoming these obstacles, we will be able to achieve our ambition and develop the project as much as possible during the next year.

Actually, we don't make partnerships with any organization.