Design and Development of an Economical and Reliable Solar-Powered Trash Compactor

In this paper, a reliable and economical solar-powered trash compactor has been developed and demonstrated. This increases the capacity of existing trash bins by 5–8 times per day, depending on the equipment used. An important advantage of this waste compaction mechanism is integrating solar PV source with the existing trash compactors thereby improving its operation flexible and economically viable. Considering the intermittency of solar PV source, battery storage is also integrated with the system to ensure the power supply reliability. In this paper, a maximum power point tracking (MPPT)-based charging topology is used to transfer the maximum power from the solar PV to the battery and thus to enhance the power conversion efficiency of the power electronic interface. As prolonged monsoons can disrupt the compaction process due to the unavailability of solar PV source, grid integration with the proposed system ensures the long-term continuity of operation. Moreover, surplus solar energy is exported to the grid, thereby cutting down the electricity tariff significantly. A prototype of the solar-powered trash compactor system with one-time garbage compaction capacity of 2.5lbs has been developed to validate the proposed topology to be applicable for large capacity trash compactors as well.