BioBlaze - An Automated Hot Composter

Awarded Most Innovative 

The composting world is in need of a resurgence of efficiency and ease. From the average homeowner to the experienced composter, time is a valuable resource. Most electric composters on the market are expensive, inefficient, and don’t actually go through the composting process. Being college students looking to save time and explore the composting world, TerraThermic Inc set out to discover a market to create a device that could help solve this composting time requirement. 

The target customers were identified to be both homeowners and shops that produce organic waste. Then research was conducted to answer the main customer requirements for such a product. A series of benchmark products were also identified to see market competition and quantified the features through a house of quality. Through concept generation and down selection techniques, TerraThermic Inc boiled ideas down to create our concept of an automated hot composter.

            After conducting weeks of market research, prospective consumers detailed the most important design requirements as:

• Automated from start to finish

• Regulate temperature and humidity 

• Storing 5 gallons and protect against odors

I focused most of my contribution on all of the electronics and software components, along with conducting all of the analysis for thermal accuracy and humidity.

Design Evolution

Sub Assemblies

Accuracy Analysis

 The first set of physical tests that were run was the frame stability test. This was accomplished by adding the weighted bucket with lemons into the frame system and rotating the motor nonstop for over 2 hours. Even with the dropping of the heavy lemons from the lip to the bottom of the bucket, the frame held the bucket very well in place by resting the body on the caster wheels and with the suspension of the slip ring system. This meant that our system was able to withstand heavy loads and still work as intended. 

The next set of physical testing that was run was a combination of both temperature and slip ring testing. This was conducted in a similar fashion where the bucket with the lemons was run for a continuous period, longer than 3 hours to test if the dropping motion made the slip ring lose contact or if we could maintain and reach the steady state as intended. Our method of verification for the slip ring was through the bluetooth connection from the lid to the frame. If the lid ever lost power, we would notice that the screen would not update its numbers every 3 seconds and would rather display 0 instead. What we noticed here was that the entire cycle, we never lost power and were always able to monitor the internal temperature within.

      To test its ability to accurately maintain temperature, repetitive testing was done to measure how accurate the control system within the system is to maintain 45C. This was done by adding 10 large lemons into the bucket and powering the cycle on to monitor the temperature maintenance. Compared to market products, BioBlaze is 3 times faster at reaching the temperature and maintains the temperature to reduce the composting cycle from 4 months to 2 weeks. 

Conclusion

In conclusion, our results show that our maintained temperature accuracy and unique slip ring feature makes us competitive with other products on the market due to their lack of grinding and complete automation. Along with that, BioBlaze is also cheaper than almost all competitors by $130, making us a competitive product in the market. Our next steps are to improve weight distribution, weatherproofing, and simplifying UI. 

Functional Video

Electronic Architecture

CAD Drawings

Final Report