International Journal of Advanced Technology and Engineering Exploration, Vol 8(74)

ISSN (Print): 2394-5443 ISSN (Online): 2394-7454

Research Article
http://dx.doi.org/10.19101/IJATEE.2020.S2762167

Development of PET bottle shredder reverse vending machine

Noor Hasyimah Abu Rahim1* and Ahmad Nor Haziq Muhammad Khatib2
Lecturer, UniKL Robotics and Industrial Automation Center (URIAC), Industrial Automation Section, Universiti
Kuala Lumpur Malaysia France Institute, Selangor, Malaysia1
Undergraduate, Bachelor of Engineering Technology in Mechatronics, Universiti Kuala Lumpur Malaysia France
Institute, Selangor, Malaysia2

Received: 19-September-2020; Revised: 10-January-2021; Accepted: 20-January-2021

©2021 Noor Hasyimah Abu Rahim and Ahmad Nor Haziq Muhammad Khatib. This is an open access article distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any
medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract
This paper presents the development of a reverse vending machine (RVM) with shredding features that can shred the
polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles. Plastic waste such as plastic bottles and plastic containers are often being
thrown into landfills. Dustbins are overflowed due to these used bottles occupied very large space. Used plastic bags and
plastic bottles in different sizes are found scattered in the streets, gutters, and even in drains causes a significant
environmental threat. A reverse vending machine is a machine that accepts empty beverage containers and returns money
where it helps to encourage user to recycle. The returned PET bottles are shredded into smaller pieces for the use of next
recycling process. The hardware is equipped with capacitive sensors that will detect bottles, status display by using Liquid
Crystal Display (LCD) and all major process will be controlled by Arduino UNO. The microcontroller will send the signal
to activate both motors which are (direct current) DC motors that will actuate the shredding process and coin dispensing
respectively. This PET shredder RVM is capable to shred the standard size of empty PET bottles and consumers will be
rewarded with amount according to number of bottles inserted. Since it is in a form of vending machine, it is suitable to
be placed near the streets, buildings and convenience stores. Positively, the project can benefit the consumers in a way
that they do not have to go to recycle centre to recycle PET bottles to the shredded form of plastic.

Keywords
Reverse vending machine, Plastic shredding, Recycle.

1.Introduction To achieve this, continuous commitment and support

Recycling is the process of treating waste materials to from the government, private sector, and public are
produce new products. Recycling significantly will very important [3]. This paper presents the project
lower the amount of waste, the use of new raw that combines the concept of RVM and plastic
materials, energy consumption, air pollution that shredder machine where it can turn the original form
coming from waste combustion and water pollution of PET bottle into shredded plastic which had
when leachate bringing all the contaminants from minimized one recycling process in the recycle
landfill [1]. Malaysians are producing waste products center. The objective of this project is mainly to:
at a frightening rate compared to the natural  Shred the inserted PET bottles
degradation process. The resources are being used at  Reward the user in form of money in exchange to
a very high speed exceeding the rate of these the returned PET bottles
materials are being reproduced. The recorded  Help collect recyclable materials and hence, to
recycling rate in Malaysia is only 10.5 per cent, boost recycling activities anywhere anytime
which is far behind the developed countries [2].
The scope covers the development of the RVM’s
By 2020, Malaysia has targeted to not only achieve prototype until the performance evaluation including
the 22% recycling rate, but also tremendous functionality and reliability testing. The remainder of
improvement in becoming a zero waste nation. the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 briefs the
work done by others. Material and methods from
hardware development until assembly is described in
*Author for correspondence Section 3. In Section 4, result from this proof of
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concept work is presented, followed by discussion in process can be proceeded and to avoid the different
Section 5. This paper ends with conclusion and the recycle material from mixing up.
proposition of future works.
In the paper by Deena Mariya [16], image processing
2.Literature review system is used to identify the inserted plastic bottle is
Polyethylene terephthalate, commonly abbreviated a real plastic or not and the point will be calculated
PET, PETE, is a thermoplastic polymer resin of the and credited correspondingly. It involved three main
polyester family and is used in synthetic fibers. PET steps which are making of dataset, model training and
bottles are commonly used by the manufacturers as inference. Sinaga in [17] proposed the use of barcode
containers for their drinks, for example, carbonated scan system for the operation of RVM where it can
beverages, water bottles and many food products. help to sort out between plastic bottles and cans by
Beside glass and paper, most of the packaging comparing the barcode line with developed database.
materials like bottles and containers that used to keep
food products and other consumer goods as well are In most of shredder machine, pulley mechanism is
using PET as raw material. The range cover from used which is powered through the belt drive to
beverages bottles, food jar, edible oils, detergents and reduce the speed of the shaft and enable the shredder
cosmetics, also pharmaceutical products. to shred the plastic bottles completely. The jaw
couplings on the other hand are designed to be able to
Plastic bottle takes time to be decomposed because transfer large amounts of torque, as the application of
plastic is non-biodegradable. Therefore, it is essential shredding is required. The design of cutting tool and
that plastic should be recycled. The process of number of shaft contributes to the amount and quality
recycling starts with collecting plastic bottles. Then, of shredded plastic after certain period of time. All
they must be sorted in different categories. In order to machine offers one function only which is plastic
form a pallet, the component must be crushed or shredding without the function of RVM.
melted. Therefore, the plastic bottle must be cut into
smaller pieces appropriate with the machine 3.Methods
condition before transferred to the further process, 3.1Framework and product design
such as injection molding [4]. Impact system and In mechanical design point of view, the RVM consist
rotary system are two common system used in the of several sub systems, material, dimension, and the
crushing machine. related important aspects. Figure 1 shows the 3D
model of PET bottle shredder RVM. It is designed in
In other countries such as Norway and Japan, they square shaped, divided into three main sub systems; -
already introduced the RVM and it was a huge Collecting, Shredding and Coin Dispensing. It is
success. For example, TOMRA Japan has placed installed with 1-unit LCD 16x2 display, 1 shredder
around 1200 RVM in Japan and the machines unit, 1-coin dispenser unit, 2 unit capacitive sensors,
collected 300 million PET bottles to be recycled in a 1 unit 5V DC motor, 1 unit 24V DC motor with
year as stated in [5]. The RVM is placed at accessible motor driver MD10-POT, 1-unit chain drive with
area such as in front of convenience store to allow sprockets, 1 24V power supply unit, 3 LED lights and
consumer to return empty PET containers for 1 Arduino Uno R3 controller. The hopper is equipped
recycling purpose. The machine then will reward the with capacitive sensor to detect and count the
end user in form of cash or credit point where it helps quantity of empty bottles. Each bottle will be
to encourage user to recycle and time saving. While shredded inside the shredder unit that is located at the
in Malaysia, RVM is still in the process to be bottom of the machine. Coin is dispensed out through
introduced and installed across the country. dispensing unit. In order to run the RVM, a flowchart
was design and the program was developed using
Previous related research regarding RVM and Arduino IDE software. According to system
shredding machine presented in [6–15] shows the flowchart in Figure 2, the system starts by inserting
variety design of cutter used to crush the plastic plastic bottles and the capacitive sensor will detect
bottles, different type of controller depending on the the presence of the bottles. The Arduino will make
complexity of the machine and mechanism of money the decision to turn on the shredder motor and
dispensing like the one implemented in vending undergo shredding process. Along the shredding
machine. Discrete sensors are commonly used to process, the coin dispenser motor will turn on to push
detect and recognize the plastic bottle before the next the coin out once the capacitive sensor reaches the
counting number of four bottles.
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Noor Hasyimah Abu Rahim and Ahmad Nor Haziq Muhammad Khatib

Figure 1 Main frame mechanical design of PET bottle shredder reverse vending machine

Figure 2 System flowchart

between object and sensor. Capacitive proximity
3.2Hardware components sensor output is typically transmitted as a contact
A. Capacitive proximity sensor closure or a pulse that is activated when an object
This capacitive proximity sensor is used to detect reaches a specific distance threshold.
plastic bottles that go through the reverse vending
machine. It uses the variation of Capacitance value

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B. Shredder unit shredder. In this project, 12 teeth with 15mm

The purpose of the shredding mechanism is to shred diameter use to transfer motion to 48 teeth with
up to four plastic bottles at a time. The size of the 75mm diameter. This motion transfer is use for the
shredder is 210mm x 149mm x 135mm. It has 14 motor to drive the shredder unit.
curve edge cam shaped cutting knives that are E. Arduino uno R3
arranged in a “V” shaped design as shown in Figure Arduino Uno R3 is a widely used microcontroller
3. The shaft is hexagon shaped and made of stainless board that is designed based on ATmega328P. It
steel. The knives are assembled to the single shaft offers It is a microcontroller board based on
with spacer in between them. The material of the ATmega328P. It has 14 digital input/output pins, 6
cutting knives is made from mild steel while the body
analog inputs, a 16MHz quartz crystal, a USB
of the shredder case is made from steel.
connection, a power jack, an ICSP header and a reset
C. Chain drive
button. It provides enough input and output to
The chain drive is a way of transmitting mechanical
power form one place to another. Power convey by a support the PET bottle shredder Reverse Vending
roller chain known as drive chain or transmission Machine system development.
chain. The drive gear pulls the chain with mechanical F. Coin dispenser unit
force into system and transfer to another with same or The coin dispenser unit is developed to dispense
different output power. In this project, chain drive is RM0.20 coin for every 4 bottles counted. It uses a
used to transfer energy motion from DC motor to 12V DC motor with 30 rpm that rotates the spring to
shredder. dispense coin. The size of the coin dispenser is 70mm
D. Sprocket x 160mm x 62mm. The coins are stored in a spring
Sprocket is a profiled wheel with teeth that mesh to inside a covered box with thickness of 2mm.
chain, track, and other indented material. Sprocket
transmit rotary motion between a motor and a

Figure 3 The design of shredder unit

3.3Circuit and component construction connection from the controller to each component is
This system uses one controller that is Arduino Uno shown in the Figure 4 below. For the component’s
R3. There is one LCD 16x2 module, three LED light, placement, all the electronic components are soldered
one 5V Dc motor with motor driver (L293D) and one on a donut board. Power supply unit 24V 10 amp is
capacitive sensor used for this system. All the wire being used to supply power to the Arduino Uno R3
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Noor Hasyimah Abu Rahim and Ahmad Nor Haziq Muhammad Khatib

and motor driver to drive 24V Dc electrical scooter top of the shredder. The shaft of the shredder is
motor. The power supply unit is stored inside an attached with a 48 teeth sprocket. The shredder is
electrical box as well. The box is then placed at the driven by a chain attached to the 24V Dc motor. The
base behind the shredder unit. For the shredder unit, motor is attached to an L bracket mounting and the
it is placed at the base and tighten with 4 bolts and distance between the shredder and the motor is
nuts to keep the shredder from moving. There is a 350mm.
hopper that is made from plywood and attached on

Figure 4 Schematic electrical diagram

flow. Beside the receiving area at the top side, there
3.4Product assembly is an LCD to indicate the machine status. The coin
The full assembly of shredder unit, coin dispensing dispensing unit is designed at the front side.
unit and final product of PET bottle shredder RVM Electrical control box is designed for the circuit and
are shown in Figure 5, 6 and 7. Shredder and motor power supply placement. The reverse vending
are connected by using chain drive. Hopper for machine is equipped with 4 caster wheels so that it
plastic bottle storage is attached on top of shredder. can be portable.
The receiving of the plastic bottle will be in vertical

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Figure 5 Shredder unit assembly

Figure 6 Coin dispensing unit assembly

Figure 7 Developed Pet bottle shredder RVM

4.Results detection, the emitting pulse from sensor to the

A prototype containing all material and component controller will result in incremental number of
described above has been developed and tested. counters before starting the shredding process. This
Several experiments and tests including system testing is done to test the capability of the sensor to
interfacing and data analysis were carried out during sense the PET bottle continuously. Based on the
the development stage to verify the function and Table 1 below, the capacitive sensor has yield about
well-integrated of each component. 100% of detection capability to detect plastic bottles
at distance 2cm, 75% of detection capability at
4.1Functionality testing of capacitive sensor distance 4cm and 75% of detection capability at
This Reverse Vending Machine uses one capacitive distance 6cm.
sensor to detect the presence of bottles. Upon
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Noor Hasyimah Abu Rahim and Ahmad Nor Haziq Muhammad Khatib

Table 1 Detection capability by capacitive sensor

No of Testing Material Distance (cm) Detection capability
1 500ml PET bottle 2 Yes
2 500ml PET bottle 2 Yes
3 500ml PET bottle 4 Yes
4 500ml PET bottle 4 Yes
5 500ml PET bottle 6 No
6 500ml PET bottle 6 Yes
7 1000ml PET bottle 2 Yes
8 1000ml PET bottle 2 Yes
9 1000ml PET bottle 4 Yes
10 1000ml PET bottle 4 No
11 1000ml PET bottle 6 Yes
12 1000ml PET bottle 6 Yes

4.2Performance result of shredder Unit capability and the duration. Two different motors
The PET bottle shredder reverse vending machine were used in the testing which are 12V Dc and 24V
uses shredder to shred the plastic bottles into small Dc motor. Based on the result, the RVM has yield
pieces. This testing is conducted to determine about 67% of shredding capability by using 12VDC
whether the shredder can function continuously and motor with averagely 19.6 sec for bottle thickness
able to shred plastic bottles into small pieces. Figure 0.055mm and 0.175mm. By using 24VDC motor, the
8 (left) below is plastic pieces of bottle with RVM has yield 90% capability of shredding with
0.055mm thickness after being shredded and the averagely 17.1 sec involving both type of thickness.
pieces are thinner and smaller compared to the right It can be concluded that the duration of shredding
that shows plastic pieces of bottle with 0.175mm process is proportional to the bottle thickness / bottle
thickness after being shredded. The higher the type. 24VDC motor has better performance than
thickness of the plastic bottle, the thicker and bigger 12VDC motor. The Hexagon shaft with curve edge
the size of the plastic pieces after being shredded. cam shaped cutting knives that are aligned in a “V”
Table 2 below shows the result of shredding shape is proved has the capability as cutting tools.

Bottle with thickness 0.05mm Bottle with thickness 0.175mm

Figure 8 Comparison of shredder PET bottles of two different thickness

Table 2 Performance result of shredding Unit

Motor type No of testing Bottle Shredding duration Shredding capability
thickness (mm) (seconds)
Pass Fail
12V Dc Motor 1 0.055 15 /
2 0.055 15 /
3 0.055 15 /
4 0.055 15 /
5 0.055 15 /
6 0.055 18 /
7 0.055 18 /
8 0.055 20 /
9 0.055 23 /
10 0.055 25 /
11 0.175 26 /
12 0.175 30 /
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Motor type No of testing Bottle Shredding duration Shredding capability

thickness (mm) (seconds)
Pass Fail
Average 19.6
24V Dc Motor 13 0.055 12 /
14 0.055 12 /
15 0.055 12 /
16 0.055 15 /
17 0.055 15 /
18 0.055 18 /
19 0.175 20 /
20 0.175 20 /
21 0.175 22 /
22 0.175 25 /
Average 17.1

4.3 Performance result of coin dispenser Unit result in Table 3, the coin dispensing unit has yield
This coin dispenser uses one DC motor connected to 75% capability of dispensing the correct quantity of
a motor driver powered by Arduino Uno. The DC coin (RM0.20) for every 4 bottles counted with
motor is attached to a spring like coil that is made to average duration of 2.75sec. It also can be concluded
store coins. The coins are then dispensed by the that the capacitive sensor has the 75% ability to
rotation of motor. This testing is done to test the detect the PET bottle. 5V Dc motor is suitable to
efficiency of the motor to dispense coin to function drive the rotation of spring with load.
continuously and able to dispense the correct number
of coins for every 4 bottles counted. Based on the

Table 3 Performance result of coin dispensing Unit

Motor type No of testing No of bottles Dispensing Duration Dispense Capability
detected (seconds) Yes No
5V Dc Motor 1 4 2 /
2 4 2 /
3 4 3 /
4 3 2 /
5 3 4 /
6 4 2 /
7 4 3 /
8 4 4 /
Average 2.75

5.Discussion after being shredded. The duration of shredding

5.1Overall system performance process is also proportional to the bottle thickness /
Based on the result, it shows that the capacitive bottle type. If this reverse vending machine is
sensor is reliable to detect the plastic bottles inside implemented in a bigger application scale, the
the hopper. The system manages to detect the plastic material of the shredder needs to be replaced with
bottle every time and the connectivity between sensor stainless steel material so that it can shred tougher
and the Arduino controller is established well. The PET bottles. In addition, based on the observation
PET bottle shredder RVM is able to shred plastic from this project that is using a 24V Dc electrical
bottles into small pieces and dispense coins after motor to drive the shredder unit, it is important to
several testing. Each component has been tested and replace the motor with a higher torque motor such as
the PET bottle shredder RVM is able to shred two an AC motor to smoothen the shredding process
different thickness of plastic bottles which is mineral without problems. The conceptual idea of PET
water and drinking water plastic bottle. The plastic Reverse Vending Machine with shredding features is
bottle will turn into small plastic pieces after being targeted to help collecting, shredding a small quantity
shredded for the purpose to be sent to recycles of plastic bottles and sending them to recycle centres
centres. The higher the thickness of the plastic bottle, in form of plastic pieces. This machine can be placed
the thicker and bigger the size of the plastic pieces at the nearest and reachable area as one effort to
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Noor Hasyimah Abu Rahim and Ahmad Nor Haziq Muhammad Khatib

promote consumers to recycle plastic bottles. Besides vending machine (RVM) with material identification
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 International Journal of Advanced Technology and Engineering Exploration, Vol 8(74)

Noor Hasyimah is a Lecturer at Ahmad Nor Haziq is an undergraduate

UniKL Malaysia France Institute in student at UniKL Malaysia France
Selangor, Malaysia. She holds a Master Institute in Selangor, Malaysia. He is
of Science in Telecommunication and currently studying Bachelor of
Information Engineering from Engineering Technology in
University Teknologi Mara (2010), Mechatronics in UniKL
BEng in Information and
Communication from Tokyo Denki Email: [email protected]
University (2006). Her research interests are Automation
and Robotics.
Email: [email protected]

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