Team: MRPD-54 (Yara Basiouny, Gwyneth Cicci, Daniel Franze Da-Silva, Matthew Pironaggi, Varunan Varathan)
2PX3 is a level two course at McMaster University that is mandatory for all engineering students. It is a design studio course, similar to 1P13P:
The course focuses on three key issues and assigns teams to identify solutions and design prototypes for the given challenges. MRPD-54 will be tackling the “McMaster Recycling Plant Design” Challenge, where an automated recycling system will be designed that would fit in the Engineering Faculty’s John Hodgins Building on the first floor. The design should be able to process a week’s worth of recycling during the quieter weekend hours, and function as a learning tool during the class hours.
Below is the Project Scope for the Recycling Plant:
“The MPRD-54 Design Project Group will design a Recycling System for the McMaster Community for the purposes of separating waste materials and recycling products for the purpose of reusing otherwise unneeded trash. The plant should last and accommodate the recycling for over 10 years to come, operating only on weekends and be used as an educational space during the rest of the week. The project is intended to benefit the community in and around McMaster University by creating a hands-on learning environment for engineering faculty students and processing waste efficiently during less busy campus hours. The proposed site of the plant is in Rooms 109 and 109A in the John Hodgins Engineering Building. This group will work to accomplish this through research and design of recycling plants process plan.”
<aside> 📄
</aside>
The goal of completing this project and the course was to better understand the effects engineering projects like this one have on society. In particular, we focused on understanding the ‘PERSEID’ method. PERSEID stands for:
Unlike the ENGINEER 1P13 course, the client requests were more geared towards understanding the side effects of the project on the community and the City of Hamilton as a whole. This meant our team was challenged with proposing a project that was useful enough to deal with the recycling needs of McMaster University without causing any harm to the nearby environment and communities.
Our metrics for better understanding our project quantitatively can be seen in the image below:
Below is the operating schedule for the recycling plant to ensure minimal disruption and efficient operation:
For the technical portion of the project, here is the flow chart we developed for the two streams of recycling we would be making:
Photo by Pavel Neznanov on Unsplash