International Journal of Advance Electrical and Electronics Engineering (IJAEEE)
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Capacitive Sensors: The Future of Waste Segregation
1
Vishal V, 2Sayantan Gangopadhyay
1,2
Sir M Visvesvaraya Institute of Technology
Abstract- Generation of waste is an inevitable consequence
of development and industrial progress. Effective waste
management is a major concern and countries have setup
robust regulatory waste management regimes. In India, the
National Government Policy, 2006 stress on collection and
treatment systems along with segregation of waste. The
economic value of waste is best realised when it is
segregated. As it is said that everything starts at home, this
paper proposes a solution for automated waste segregation
at source-level. It is a cheap and easy to use solution for a
waste segregation at home so that it can directly be collected
and processed further. The use of capacitive sensors helps
us to classify between the wet and dry waste classifying the
materials based on the dielectric values. We have also
implemented the use of IR proximity sensors to detect if a
waste is being dumped or not into the dustbin. The dustbin
fill is monitored by the use of ultrasonic sensor. The use of
recycled bins is an added advantage.
Index Terms- Automation, capacitive sensors, metal
detection, ultrasonic sensor, waste segregation.
I. INTRODUCTION
Waste management can be defined as the efficient
characterization, monitoring, treatment, handling, reuse
and residual disposition of solid waste. Bearing this in
mind, and the increased levels of waste generation,
various sub-ordinate legislations under the name of
Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate change,
Government of India (“MoEF”) in conjunct with State
Pollution Control Boards of different states (“SPCB”)
worked on the regulating the disposaland management of
generated waste and segregation methods under the law
of Environment Protection Act, 1986(“EPA”).
The common method of waste disposal is by uncontrolled
and unplanned open dumping at landfill sites. This is a
crude method and create adverse effects on the health of
the society living in and around the area. It generates
liquid leachate which contaminate the ground water and
this same water moves through the underground pipe-
lines, which consecutively leadsto certain diseases in
human beings. It also degrades the aesthetic beauty of the
environment and is an unnecessary use of land resources.
Segregation of waste is generally done by hand-picking
methods. This method is carried out by people who
generally are unaware of the after-effects of this method.
Rag-pickers are found commonly in the streets of India
and other developing countries. They often handpick
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waste that can be recycled from the landfills and sell it
for a little amount of money to make a living. The after-
effects of such activities involving skin-contact leads to
the development of skin rashes and other variousskin
diseases.
The recycling of waste is generally done at later stages,
collecting the unsegregated waste from every source,
which are then segregated by hand-picking and subjected
to further processing. The wet-waste is converted to
compost and sometimes is used to produce biogas which
is for a better cause and does not cause environmental
pollution.
A. Technical Background
The industrial level of waste segregationinvolves manual
sorting by hand-picking of waste, and organizing it into
different sections. Smaller waste products are taken out in
the beginning and the larger particles arethen segregated
in the further processes. To segregate metallic waste,
electromagnets or eddy current based separators are used.
Some high end features, like segregation based on the
ability of material to reflect light, is also done to
segregate waste. Materials based on their density are
segregated using X-rays. These methods often have
adverse impacts on environment and the workers in the
department and are very costly.
The Swachh Bharat Abhiyan has bought into people’s
minds the necessity to keep our environment clean by
strictly dumping the waste in the dustbins only. We have
not yet implemented an effective classification method of
waste segregation at our homes. This paper aims at waste
segregation at the source-level. It also implements a cost-
effective method to segregate the waste by using
automated embedded sensors to the recycle-bins kept in
houses. The use of capacitive sensors manufactured by
Texas Instruments adds a feather to the cap and gives us a
highly efficient method for waste segregation at a lesser
financial investment.
The integration of database management system which
notes down the amount of waste segregated and emptied
on a daily analysis is an added advantage.
B. Proposed Solution
This project proposal suggests the segregation of waste at
the source-level. This helps in drastically reducing the
adverse effects of inefficient waste management at later
 International Journal of Advance Electrical and Electronics Engineering (IJAEEE)
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stages. The recycling process also becomes easy and sensing, and the one we are concentrating on in our paper
consumes less time in the recycling plant proposal, is the use of it in sensing different kind of
stages.Realization of a compact, cost-effective approach materials (plastic, liquid, metal etc.). It has the ability to
and segregation systems that are user friendly is our main sense up to a larger distance with greater accuracy. The
aim. Using an automated segregation system wherethe sensor is cost-efficient and has a low power consumption
use of IR-proximity sensors detect waste, helps in which is an added advantage to meet the power
initiating the start of the microcontroller. The embedded constraints. FDC1004 is a capacitive sensor
capacitive sensors classifies the waste dumped into two manufactured by Texas Instruments.
main sections, namely biodegradable waste (such as
A. Measure of capacitance
kitchen waste) which can be used to make a compost, and
the non-biodegradable waste which can be recycled (such Capacitance is the ability of a capacitor to store electric
as plastics). Larger items which exceed the threshold charge. A parallel plate capacitor is widely used and its
value of the weight are to be manually removed which capacitance is calculated by C=Q/V where C is the
will be indicated by the buzzer. capacitance of the charge stored at a voltage V [2]. The
parallel plate capacitor as in Fig.1 consists of two
The waste is pushed in through the small spacing in the
conductor plates and the capacitance is calculated by:
bin which triggers the IR proximity sensor which initiates
the start of the system. Metallic waste is segregated by C= (ℇ r*ℇ o*A)/d (1)
introducing a magnetic section which pulls the metal
Equation 1 is characterised by:
towards it. Waste then falls into the capacitive sensing
module where the parallel plates is manufactured in the  A is the area of the two plates
form of a disc like structure and are supported by two
contacts monitored by a servo-motor. The bin is divided  ℇ r is the relative dielectric constant of the
into two sections internally, namely the biodegradable material between the plates.
section and the non-biodegradable section. If the change  ℇ o is the absolute permittivity of free space
in capacitive count value exceeds the threshold, one side (8.854 x 10-12 F/m)
of the contact is pulled out by altering the degree of
rotation of the first servo-motor and the disc inclines  d is the separation between the plates (in meters)
towards the left side of the partitioned section of the bin
and the waste is classified as biodegradable waste. If the
change in capacitive count value is less than the
threshold, then the other side of the contact is pulled out
by the second servo-motor and the disc inclines towards
the other partitioned section and the waste is classified as
non-biodegradable waste.
The ultrasonic sensor monitors the fill-level of the
dustbin in both the respective sections and when the bin
is completely filled, it initiates a buzzer. Then the
segregated waste by this automated waste segregation
device is manually taken out which can be further sent to
the recycling process. We also need to make a note that Fig. 1: Parallel Plate Capacitor
the capacitor plate disc is cleaned after each dump of the
waste so as to not affect the capacitor sensor readings for
the further waste materials which will be dumped.
C. Organization of the Paper
The paper has four sections. Section II introduces the
capacitive sensor FDC1004 and its working in detail.
Section III encases the design of the waste segregator
device and its working. Section IV gives the simulated
result of the project proposal. Section V encompasses the
conclusion part and Section VI is the reference section. Fig. 2: Electric Field Lines

II. OVERVIEW AND WORKING OF The parallel plate capacitor carries equal and opposite
charges spread evenly over the surface. The field lines
CAPACITIVE SENSOR (FDC1004)
(electric field) start from the plate havinghigher potential
Capacitive sensing is a growing technology to replace and ends at the plate having low potential. The field lines
optical detection methods and mechanical designs for sketch is shown in Fig. 2.
applications namely proximity /gesture detection,
B. Working of a Capacitive Sensor
material analysis and liquid level sensing and some other
applications. One of the main advantage of capacitive
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 International Journal of Advance Electrical and Electronics Engineering (IJAEEE)
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Fig. 3: Capacitive Sensing Technology
Capacitive sensor is a technology based on capacitive
coupling that takes the capacitance produced by the
material introduced within its field region as input [2]. A
basic capacitive sensor is anything metal or conductor
and detects anything that is conductive or has a dielectric
constant different from air. The channel count is different
for different materials. The template indicating the
sensing technology involved is shown in Fig. 3. Features
of FDC1004 is given by the Table 1.
Requirements Capacitive Touch
Channel count High (>8)
Resolution Low
Typical distance 2 to 3mm
Sensitivity 10s to 100s fF
Requires Contact Yes
Power consumption µA to mA range
Table 1: Features of FDC1004
C. Block diagram of FDC1004 Theory of Operation
Fig. 4: Block Diagram of FDC1004
The block diagram of FDC1004 is as shown in Fig.
above.FDC1004 implements a switched capacitor circuit
which transfers the charge from the sensor electrode to
the sigma-delta ADC as in Fig. 4. A 25-kHz step
waveform (indicated by the excitation block) is driven on
the sensor line for an interval of time to charge the
electrode. The charge on the sensor is transferred to a
sample-hold circuit. The sample and hold circuit is an
analog device that samples the voltage of a continuously
varying analog signal and holds its value at a constant
level for a specified period of time. Sigma-delta ADC
block encodes analog signal into a digital signal. Here the
accuracy of output is improvised as the result is a stream
of pulses as in PCM. Once the ADC completes its
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process of conversion, the result is digitally filtered and
corrected depending on the gain and offset calibrations.
FDC1004 is used mainly to classify materials based on
capacitive count, Gesture Sensing, Liquid Level Sensing,
Remote Sensing etc.
D. Parallel Plate Topology
The parallel plate topology follows the parallel plate
capacitor equation referred in Equation 1 earlier. The
high density of electric fields between the two plates
allow high sensitivity [2]. To analyse materials, the
capacitance between the plate’s changes accordingly
based on the difference of dielectric constant from
material to material and gives a unique count value.
FDC1004 has a very high resolution that detects very
small variation in dielectric values. It has a high
sensitivity range.
III. DESIGN IMPLEMENTATION
The implementation of this automated segregator of
waste at source-level, using capacitive sensor is as shown
in Fig. 5 and the flowchart of the working is in Fig. 6.
The segregator-bin is divided into two sections, namely
Biodegradable Section and the Non-Biodegradable
Section. It has five basic parts:
An IR Proximity Section
Magnetic Chamber
Capacitive Sensor FDC1004 Having a Disc Shaped
Parallel Plate
Ultrasonic Sensor HC-SR04 to monitor the fill
A Microcontroller (MSP430 suggested because of the
low power mode availability)
A. IR Proximity Sensor
An IR Proximity Sensor placed right below the opening
of the segregator bin through which the waste is pushed
in. The IR proximity sensor detects the presence of waste
materials and triggers the microcontroller to jump into
active state (If MSP430 is used, it comes out from the
low power mode).
B. Magnetic chamber
A magnetic chamber is placed below the proximity
sensor to segregate the magnetic particles from the waste
dumped. Electromagnets powered by the microcontroller
can also be used to detect magnetic materials.
C. Capacitive sensor FDC1004 module
Once the IR proximity sends an interrupt for the
microcontroller to initiate a working stage, a base-count
is set up in the capacitive sensor after a relative time
delay. We mount the parallel plates on the disc in such a
way that the area of plates increases when moving from
the centre to the outer circumference of the circle. This
arrangement is made to ensure materials of all size
(ranging from the very least value to the larger value) can
be detected by the capacitive sensor. Increasing the area
 International Journal of Advance Electrical and Electronics Engineering (IJAEEE)
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of the plates decreases the sensitivity of the capacitive

touch but such drawback is overcome by using FDC1004,
which has a higher resolution.
When we use MSP430 as a microcontroller, we can
easily implement PinOsc capacitive touch method to
determine the count values of the plates. PinOsc is
connected to an external sensor element. When the
PinOsc structure is enabled in the GPIO, the internal
structure combined with an external sensor capacitance
produces an internal oscillator. The oscillation thereby
produced is directly related to the capacitance of the
external sensor element. The frequency is to be measured
Fig. 5: Design of the Segregator
here. The working of PinOsc is shown in the Fig. 7. The
principle of a PinOsc is very simple. The microcontroller
has two timers. The first timer controls a fixed-time
interval and the second timer uses the output of Schmitt
Trigger as clock. The connection is as follows: The input
of Schmitt trigger is connected to a resistor and one of the
plate of the parallel plated capacitor. The opposite plate is
grounded. The second terminal of the resistor is
connected to the output of a multiplexer which in turn
supplies the voltage output based on the triggered output.
The charging and discharging of the capacitor toggles the
Schmitt Trigger which generates a pulse train at the
output. These pulses are applied to second timer as clock
input. The second timer output provides the capacitive
count value. When a material is introduced, the count
value alters and the count value stored in second timer is
lower than base count value. The difference between the
base count and the capacitive count helps in classifying
materials into biodegradable and non-biodegradable
waste.
The relative dielectric constant of materials varies. When
a material is introduced to the capacitor plates, the
capacitance of the capacitor increases. Biodegradable
waste (such as wet waste from kitchen) has a higher
relative dielectric constant because of the moisture, oil
and fat content present in the wet waste from the kitchen.
We set a threshold value for the capacitive count. If the
threshold value exceeds, it is classified as biodegradable
waste (wet waste) else it is classified as non-
biodegradable waste (dry waste) [3].
Depending on the classification, the Servo 1 and 2 angle
is changed so that the disc inclines towards the
biodegradable or the non-biodegradable section and the
waste is segregated. The design of the waste segregator
as shown. The ultrasonic sensor HC-SR04 detects the fill
by calculating the distance between the waste and the
disc. After the threshold value of distance is reached, the
buzzer is on and the bin is emptied manually. The
Ultrasonic sensor activates only after every iteration after
the waste is dumped. After the segregation, the
microcontroller goes into a low-power mode. This way
the continuous monitoring of waste is done and we Fig. 6: Flowchart
achieve a cost-effective and highly efficient method of
segregation of waste at source-level. IV. RESULTS
From the experiment that we conducted, it is inferred that
the magnetic materials are pulled by the electromagnetic
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system and a buzzer is sounded for a short interval of Table 2: Dielectric Constants of Common Materials
time to manually remove the metallic waste. The non-
magnetic waste fall into the parallel plate section and if MATERIAL DIELECTRIC
the threshold exceeds 40, it is assumed to be wet-waste or CONSTANT
the biodegradable waste which opens Lock 1. Plastic Air 1
materials and the non-biodegradable materials have a Alcohol 16-31
threshold value less than 40 which opens up the Lock 2. Paper 2.3
The relative dielectric constant of dry waste materials is PVC 3
very less, with the exception of Ceramic. Ceramic’s Plexiglass 3.2
dielectric range is to be calculated and classified as dry Silicon 11-12
waste since the capacitive sensor considers it as a wet Wood 2-6
waste. The biodegradable waste from the kitchen has a Water at 20°C 80.4
very high relative dielectric constant due to the presence Water at 40°C 78.5
of moisture and some organic matter. The dielectric
Table 3: Capacitive count values
constants of some materials verified by the simulated
result of the capacitive sensors is shown in Table 2.Table
3 gives the capacitive count values of the biodegradable
and the non-biodegradable waste based on the
experiments performed. The biodegradable waste
generally wet waste has a capacitive count of more than
40 followed by the polymer materials which are non-
biodegradable and having a capacitive count of less than
40.
The ultrasonic sensor readings are monitored after every
interrupt generated from the IR-Proximity sensor. A
threshold value, which is three-fourth of the height of the
bin, is set and when the threshold value is reached, a Table 4: Buzzer indications
buzzer is sounded and the bin is emptied manually. The
Condition Buzzer
buzzer indications are as shown in Table 4.
Indication
A small change in voltage changes the capacitive sensor Metal detected ON
values as indicated by Fig. 8 [5]. We can also use a Plastics or kitchen waste OFF
measure which calculates a change in voltage based on Ultrasonic Sensor (HC-SR04) ON
the objects detected and hence lead to varying value > 15
capacitance values which can be used to detect the object. Ultrasonic Sensor (HC-SR04) OFF
There are several features of FDC1004 and its value < 15
capacitance change in value depending on several
parameters as indicated in [5].
The FEMM simulated results of the FDC1004 by Texas
Instruments is shown in Fig. 7 [6]. The ungrounded
targets [6] having relative low and high dielectric
constants indicated in Table 2 are sensed using the
capacitive approach.

Fig. 8: Capacitive Sensor Readings with Change in

Voltage
Fig. 7. FEMM Simulation of FDC1004 Capacitive Sensor V. CONCLUSION
This paper aims to highlight the current problems faced
by the society and industries, when it comes to waste
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segregation in an effective manner. This project aims to
find an effective solution to this problem, while
increasing the user convenience at the same time. The
problem of waste generation can neither be avoided at the
moment, nor can be avoided in the future. We can only
try to find potent and cost-effective solutions to this
problem and this waste-segregator is a very viable
solution,since it segregates the waste at the source-level
itself.
REFERENCES
[1] Waste Management in India: An Overview,
Article by Arya Tripathy, 11 May 2015.
[2] FDC1004: Basics of Capacitive Sensing and
Applications- TEXAS INSTRUMENTS,
December 2014

[3] Capacitive Sensor Operation and Optimization-
Technical
Libraryhttps://www.lionprecision.com/tech-
library/technotes/cap-0020-sensor-theory.html
[4] MSP430 Low Cost PinOsc Capacitive Touch
Overviewhttp://processors.wifi.ti.com/index.php/
MSP430_Low_Cost_PinOsc_Capacitive_Touch_
Overview
[5] FDC1004 4-Channel Capacitance to Digital
Converter for Capacitive Sensing Solutions-
TEXAS INSTRUMENTS, AUGUST 2014 –
REVISED APRIL 2015.
https://www.ti.com/lit/ds/ymlink/fdc1004.pdf
[6] TEXAS INSTRUMENTS- Capacitive Proximity
Sensing Using
FDC1004https://www.ti.com/lit/an/snoa928.pdf

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