A team of students and faculty at the International Institute of Information Technology – Bangalore (IIITB) has developed a remote compost monitoring solution that would not only aid sustainable agriculture but also help reduce the city’s garbage woes and bring down the manual labour involved in composting.
The team led by Jyotsna Bapat has built a prototype for an intelligent IoT system that remotely monitors and manages compost, which can be used as fertilizer.
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“The garbage piles we see everywhere in Bengaluru have a lot of food waste in them. This can cause a lot of diseases. If composed correctly, the volume can come down by a factor of 10,” says Prof. Bapat.
A stinking problem
Using compost made from organic waste as fertilizer can help improve soil health, reduce reliance on chemical fertilizers, and contribute to environmental conservation.
However, many urban dwellers refrain from using their kitchen waste for this process due to reasons such as a lack of space and the complexities involved.
“The reason a lot of people don’t do it is that if certain parameters such as the temperature, the humidity or the water level inside go wrong, the composting doesn’t complete, and then it starts smelling. This attracts bugs,” explains Prof. Bapat, who herself composts wet waste on her balcony.
Reducing manual labour
On a larger scale, companies that compost resort to manual labour, which involves a person checking and stirring the compost from time to time to ensure that the process happens successfully.
“We felt that somebody going in and checking a compost is not really the nicest job. We wondered if a machine could do this,” notes Bapat.
The team’s solution includes a sensor hub associated with each bin to monitor the compost’s pH, temperature, humidity, and CO2 levels. The hub allows remote monitoring of these values and the generation of alerts using a mobile phone.
While anybody can use the solution, Prof. Bapat notes that currently the team is looking for those who are doing composting at a large scale. About 14-15 bins have been installed within the campus, and data is currently being collected.
“We already have a client. They are talking to different panchayats in the neighbourhood of Bengaluru. Before they deploy it there, we need to do a thorough testing at IIIT-B,” Bapat notes.
Published – December 30, 2024 03:04 am IST
