Three students with the invention of scavenging era 4.0

Student group of Da Nang Polytechnic University created a hydraulic garbage collector, which can collect waste on both ground and underwater.

Having spent 4 green summers volunteering, regularly participating in scavenging activities, protecting the environment, three students of Da Nang University of Technology realized that it was necessary to improve the effectiveness of these programs. Thinking of doing it, these young people shared the creativity of a garbage collection machine, which could collect waste on both ground and water. The author of this special scavenger machine is the group of friends: Vo Anh Khoa, Tran Van Nhat and Truong Van Binh , who are also final year students in Ship Engineering, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Da Nang University of Technology. .

Products of water and garbage collection machines and authors.(Photo: VNA).

Invention for the environment

Team leader Vo Anh Khoa said: "After volunteering, camping at the beaches, the group saw a lot of garbage drifting in the water's edge. all kinds of garbage collectors on the water can only work in deep water, and at the edge of the water with a lot of sand it will be difficult to operate, so the group formed the idea of ​​creating a newly collected machine. collect on sand, just collect underwater and especially useful at the water edge. "

The marine waste collection machine of the group has a rather large design, with dimensions of 4.3m long, 2.7m wide and 1.7m high. The garbage collector of the machine has a width of 4m, the volume of garbage containers is 2 cubic meters, maximum speed of land is 12 km / hour, and the underwater speed is 16 km / hour. The machine can operate continuously for 6 hours and has the productivity equivalent to 12 manual scavengers.

The machine operates on land thanks to the crawler system and operates under water thanks to the propeller system placed in the tube. The front has a specially designed garbage collection door that helps increase the area of ​​collection. Waste will be put on the mesh conveyor system with the arrangement of spikes and drainage holes (helping water and sand to be returned to the environment). Then, the garbage will be put into the treatment system (compressed or minced) and then taken back to the container. When full, workers can remove the device to remove the trash.

Tran Van Nhat shared: "I want the invention of the group will soon be applied in practice, to contribute to reducing the amount of waste at the coast in the country. At the same time, the uncle of environmental sanitation workers I also hope that this machine can help Da Nang city green, clean and beautiful to develop sustainable tourism ".

Overcome difficulties

The first few days of working, the three boys saw a series of difficulties that the group will encounter, such as learning about new technology, finding materials and a small amount of initial capital.

Identify ideas and plan from October 2018, while being a final year student, but the group still spends time wandering around markets, the street seeks to buy equipment; assembled, tested and then disassembled and continued to research and re-install. After 7 months of work so far, the group has completed the sample version with the size of 1/4 the actual size.

The marine garbage collector is operated in the lake of Da Nang University of Technology.(Photo: VNA).

According to Truong Van Binh, the most difficult thing is to find suitable materials, good features but cheap.'Because this trial version is due to our own pocket money making a very tight budget. Each of you slopes all your money to save, contributes about VND 10 million to all construction stages, assembling them all by hand to reduce costs. Fortunately, after that we have a lot of help and support from teachers and schools'.

Directly supporting and guiding the group's topic is Master Pham Truong Thi, Lecturer, Deputy Head of the Department of Student Affairs of the Department of Transportation Engineering, Danang University of Technology. Mr. Thi assessed: With the characteristics of the beach, there are often waves of up and down waves, a device that works on the water and operates on the beach is a very suitable plan. This idea is new, has very high applicability in the beach area, especially Vietnam is a country with a long coastline, so the device can be widely applied in many localities across the country.

Dream of starting a business in the age of technology 4.0

Immediately after completion, this invention was awarded the Second Prize of Scientific Research Conference for school students, selected to exhibit at the Danang University Student Science Festival in 2019, the first prize of the Student's Idea 2019 prayer of the Union Central Committee and receive special attention of Da Nang City Youth Union and businesses in the area.

The Deputy Secretary of Da Nang City Youth Union Nguyen Manh Dung said: "The Youth Union has actively contacted and made suggestions to support this topic. In the short term, we will guide them to register copyright and ownership. The wisdom of the invention is to encourage the members and youths to join hands to contribute to raising the awareness of environmental protection, contributing to the socio-economic development of the city.

According to Team Leader Vo Anh Khoa, the group decided to register the brand for the product and complete it to market. Next time, with the support of the Central Association of Vietnamese Students, Da Nang Youth Union, especially Da Nang University of Technology signed a contract with the group to deploy, whereby the group will continue to implement the project. project to develop a prototype device, with the goal of successfully developing equipment to apply in practice.

This complete device has a production cost of about VND 300 million . Therefore, this device will be sold many times cheaper than the imported garbage collector from abroad but has many more suitable for Vietnam.

'The group is very happy because the product has been interested by many units. We are continuing to operate, research and upgrade to automation, using cameras to recognize waste, obstacles, self-study and repair. Hope to sell the finished products to resorts, coastal resorts, environmental companies . Not only stop at the idea of ​​students, this is the first step in the career path of both Vo Anh Khoa shared.