International Journal of Waste Resources

Abstract

Development of a Waste Plastic Shredding Machine

Akinfiresoye Waleola Ayo, OJ Olukunle and DJ Adelabu

Plastic is one of the most common used materials in the world today, but, they cause serious environmental pollution and exhaustion of landfill space. The recycling of waste plastic recovers the material, which can be used to make new plastic products such as containers, plastic lumbers and particle boards. For this to happen, the waste plastic will first be shred into small bits making it ready for transportation and further processing. This necessitated the development of a plastic shredder to recycle the waste plastic found in Federal University of Technology, Akure (FUTA), Ondo State, Nigeria environments. The shredder has the feeding unit, the shredding unit, power transmission unit and the machine frame. The performance of the machine was evaluated and test results showed that there was a correlation between the machine speed with a regression < 1 and there was a linear relationship with all variable parameters (The Shredding time (T), the Specific Mechanical Energy (SME), Throughput (TP) and Recovery Efficiency (RE)) and the variable operation speeds (1806.7 rpm, 1290.5 rpm and 1003.7 rpm). The throughput of the machine is 27.3 kg/hr and the efficiency is 53% for all type of plastic and 95% for Polyvinylchloride type of plastic. The machine is user friendly and the cost of producing one unit of the machine as at the time of fabrication was estimated to be One Hundred and Forty Thousand, Seven Hundred and Fifty Naira (N 140, 750:00k) only making it affordable to acquire for small and medium scale entrepreneurs in waste plastic recycling business