dc.description | In Uganda, there is increased production and use of PET plastic bottles in the production sector of
the economy most especially in packaging of different kinds of beverages like drinking water.
After use, most of these bottles are improperly disposed-off in the environment which poses a
health threat.
Efforts have been made to collect disposed-off bottles for reuse or for other purposes. However,
collectors of these plastics face the challenge of storage and transportation to the recycling plants
yet these plastics can be put to other uses. Therefore this research project is set out to design,
fabricate and test the efficiency of the plastic chopping machine.
A motorized PET plastic bottle chopping machine was designed with capacity of 60kg/hr, and
chopping particle size of 10mm.Aprototype of the machine was fabricated from different materials
such as hardened steel shafts, hollow sections, mild steel plates and other various attachments. The
main components of the prototype are the feed hopper, chopping chamber which consists of the
rollers and cutting blades, and the motor. The prototype designed, fabricated and tested for the
efficiency and particle size .The performance of the plastic chopping machine was tested and
evaluated and it was ascertained to have a chopping efficiency of 55.77% and a retention
percentage of 44.23%. The PET plastic chopping machine has the potential to improve the
environmental sanitation since more plastics will be collected in addition to the ones collected for
recycling. However the PET plastic chopping machine should be tested for longer durations with
moderate quantities of PET plastic to ascertain the chopping efficiency over a longer period of
time in order to compare it with the minimum standard efficiency of 80%. Afield survey also has
to be conducted to assess the adoption of the machine by people basing on their responses and
improvements. | en_US |