Infrared based plastic sorting technology.

Recycling provides a panacea to avoid the damaging repercussion of plastic pollution. Although recycling is an Eco-friendly solution, it isn't economical since that the recycled plastics quality is far less than new produced plastics. One reason for the degradation in quality when different types of plastics are melted together, they tend to phase-separate, like oil and water, and set in these layers. The phase boundaries cause structural weakness in the resulting plastic. By isolating each type of plastics to be molded solely, the recycled plastic will similar to the new. The proposed solution is infrared based sorting machine that differentiate between plastic types according to their emissivity. The wide-scale application of such solution will boost the competitiveness of recycled plastics in commercial market attracting investments towards recycling and hopefully recycling the global plastic waste of 275 million tons reducing the pollution associated with production and the dumping in oceans.

Having a severe economic recession, Egypt faces grand challenges such as increasing the industrial base, improving its scientific and technological capacity, and recycling the industrial byproducts and wastes. These challenges are due to raw materials shortage and lack of advanced
technology. With industry in Egypt contributing to the GDP by 88% by 2018, such problems adversely affect the environment and economy. The purpose of the study is improving plastic recycling by avoiding phase-boundaries presence in plastic recycling. The pollution resulted from increasing plastic production of 270 million tons worldwide and the wastes that surpassed the production of 275 million tons with appearance of plastic wastes from previous years. A circular economy mainly aims to circulate the resources in the economy and recycle wastes into products. To have a working circular economy, an efficient recycling methodology and technology must be present. A circular economy must be addressed in all industries including plastic industry that we progressing to improve the recycling of the plastic wastes to have a circular industry especially when plastic industry in the largest worldwide.

We are serving all those whom are related to plastic industry. we focused on Al-Zableen slum in Egypt that all of its residents are working in collecting and recycling garbage in Egypt, but unfortunately they are earning very little money with the majority not making 5 dollars per day and they are surrounded by garbage from all sides, they do not have any health insurance. They are not educated and the government doesn't provide much care, but still they are the major recycling facility all over Egypt with more than 30% of all Egypt's garbage processed there. The recycling quality is very low and thus it is sold for little money. The focus of my group is the first implementation of this project in these slums to serve 30,000 of the uneducated poor then the wide spread application all over Egypt in all professional and amateur recycling facilities. The project we aim will automatically deal with garbage without having any of the workers to directly interact garbage and thus maintaining their health and the higher quality of the produced plastics will increase the earnings so they will be able to send their sons to schools and build professional recycling facilities.

Due to the presence of several equations and notations this is too hard to depict in this text box so I will have a screenshot to this part in the project poster and upload it here which depicts the working mechanism and used technology.

We are providing a solution to a severe problem degrading the quality of recycled plastics thus we are serving all those of who are working in plastic industry and serving the wildlife which will be not severe if the recycling was prompted and wastes was collected to be recycled instead of being dumped. We are serving the whole world which will have products of higher quality to buy instead of the degrading recycled plastics. 

We were inspired by the boid snakes which search for their preys through infrared waves by sensing the temperature emitted from living organisms and then we tried to apply the use of infrared waves in other applications especially to proliferate the plastic recycling and thus maintaining our environment as clean as possible. We applied a new factor to be taken in consideration in classification between different objects other than electric conductivity and density that measuring density will be impossible considering the irregular shape of plastic wastes and the presence of impurities will alter the density. The presence of impurities in wastes completely make the electrical conductivity classification useless. thus we had to think in something that is varied in different types of plastics and the presence of impurities won't change it very much then we thought of emissivity because we had studied in physics last year. Then to fully understand the concept we made an extensive research to know plank's law, Wien's kaw, Stefan-Boltzmann and Boltzman constants. We had the idea of calculating wavelength through infrared temperature senor instead of wavelength meter that is 10 times more costly than infrared temperature sensor and we thought of deriving all the laws we studied to be able to measure emissivity of object when we could clearly did after extensive study to the associated laws and formulas.

The core technology is the use of infrared temperature sensor and thermocouple connected to a micro-controller such as Arduino as brain for analyzing the date received from the two sensors and based on the calculations in the code of the Arduino it will efficiently calculate the emissivity of the plastics and thus determining its type automatically without any need of humans nearby with sensors worth 12 dollars and electricity operated by a single 9 V battery. We mimicked the idea of using infrared waves to differentiate between objects from nature from boid snakes that use infrared waves to search for preys since they emit infrared based on their temperature.

A circular economy mainly aims to circulate the resources in the economy and recycle wastes into products. To have a working circular economy, an efficient recycling methodology and technology must be present. My solution is a one step of many to improve the recycling of the most spread product worldwide in the world which is plastic in which the global production reached 270 million tones and the wastes reached 275 million tones which is more than our production by the waste’s years before. The pollution resulting from the use of 4% of the global petroleum production in the world to produce plastics. The wastes that disturb the environment and destroy the wildlife and since that plastic is designed to last for more than 500 years before degrading. With our ever-increasing production of plastic, the world will turn to a bin full of plastics produced as old as 100 years ago and more. Thus, my solution addresses the application of circular economy principles in plastic industry that shall recycle the plastic wastes ti be similar to the new thus reducing the production of new plastics conserving resources. My solution aims to improve the plastic recycling process. To prove the capability of the project to work efficiently a test was conducted on the plastic sorter to ensure that it has the ability to differentiate between 6 different types of plastic, which are: polyethylene

terephthalate / high density polyethylene / polyvinyl chloride / low density polyethylene / polypropylene / Polystyrene/Polypropylene. and it succeeded

None, we are still in the prototype phase, within year we will be beginning the implementation of our project and still we will be serving none. in 5 years we think it will be further implemented in our country and it will serve 100 thousand working in plastic industry in Egypt that will recycles wastes into plastic production in stock for the 104 million residents in Egypt.

within one year, my goal is finding supporters from businessmen and fundraisers as well as supporting technology professionals who can support us in implementing our project as a macro-controlled operated system instead of our small micro-controlled operated system. in 5 years we target the presence of our technology in all plastic recycling facilities and factories in Egypt and in some neighbor countries.

The lack of funds and professionals to support us in developing our project for wide-scale application.

By reaching out with entrepreneurs in maker's fair next march and Egyptian international science and technology fair next month and through this competition Solve at MIT in September and through our marketing campaigns both online in social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter as well as offline campaigns in streets to introduce our solution to the public and connect with environmental campaigns and organizations that are concerned with recycling. Also there exist professionals in our school that we are planning to recruit them to turn our small micro-controller operated prototype to a large scale macro-controller operated prototype

Didn't select other.

4 people, me with the support of 3 friends at school/

We are all STEM high school students in Egypt, we work on various projects usually 2 or more each year and this year we had the idea of improving plastic industry by manufacturing bio-plastic and prompting plastic recycling to increase its competitiveness in the market as a solution to the degrading waste management in Egypt, our country and the whole world. We had made an extensive research concerning the challenges associated with plastic recycling beginning from the arduous task of collecting plastic wastes and separating it from other wastes and we hypothesized a solution to do so automatically using capacitive reactance sensor. Then we worked on the solution of further separating different types of plastics to ease the plastic recycling process and increase its efficiency. We made a poster for the project and presented it in front of evaluators from our school and they praised the project.

I am not currently partnering with any organizations

In terms of impact my solution will further increase the efficiency of plastic recycling and thus increase the competitiveness of recycled plastics in the market attracting adequate investments to plastic recycling. The recycling industry will further grow and the pollution associated with plastic production and plastic wastes will further diminishes. While the investment in plastic production increase, less wastes will be present especially in my country: Egypt, in which plastic wastes is a formidable challenge especially in slums and sub-urban areas such as Al-Zableen area where the majority of plastic wastes are dumped there and the population of these slums are suffering from increased pollution although it is a source of revenue because the people living in Al-Zableen are working in plastic recycling, but the methodology of recycling is still too basic with limited revenue and the quality of recycled plastic is abysmal. The revenue from my project will be the increase in sales of recycled plastics since its quality will further increase widening its market and increasing customers.

Currently seeking funds for wide-application of my project by presenting it to different businessmen next month in EISTF (Egypt International Science and Technology Fair). Also next year, I will present my solution in biggest fair in Egypt which is maker's fair next March as well as currently planning a marketing Campaign on Facebook through my Facebook page,STEM Passion.

Since that solve is a professional platform to be connected to the world and pitch my solution to professionals from multifarious disciplines as well as businessmen. With professional judges reviewing my project and pointing to the points of weakness and strength in my project. I will be able to improve the points of weakness and focus on the points of strength. The businessmen who will be present in the final may be convinced with my idea and fund my project for wide application.

didn't select other

Organization that can value the potential of the possible outcome of the project. I don't have names in mind, but I think all environmental campaigns and related organizations might be concerned with my projects as well as recycling companies.

My project is not related to AI

I will utilize the prize in building a professional team of specialists in marketing , fundraising, and distribution as well as technology experts. The team will support me to raise funds for the project and let the people know about the latest advances in my project and the possible profits of investing in the wide-application of the project in real life.

My solution is not targeted for women only so I think I am not eligible for this prize.

My project is not related to AI.