Digital Waste Cooking Oil Collection and Storage System Design

Abstract

Vegetable oil is a common staple in every household, used in everyday cooking. After repetitive heating cycles, the used oil is discarded by pouring it down the drain. However, this leads to drain clogging and environmental pollution. Instead of disposing the waste material, it can be recycled. A prototype system is designed to collect and store the waste cooking oil (WCO) to make WCO recycling easily accessible and convenient for the community and WCO collectors. The prototype works on its ability to assess the density of the liquid and differentiate between used vegetable oil and other liquids. The prototype is controlled using Arduino MEGA 2560 which computes the density using data obtained from sensors. The controller then decides on accepting or rejecting the liquid deposited based on the accepted WCO density range of 0.91-0.93 kg/L. This prototype is also equipped with GSM (Global System for Mobile communication) technology to indicate to a local collection operator when the storage tank is reaching its capacity. The prototype was tested and results clearly indicated the prototype is able to function as desired. The prototype can be further improved with sensors of higher quality and accuracy and storage tank of larger capacity for actual implementation.