For the 2020-2021 academic school year, a group of seven students is tasked with working with Purdue on Project 1.8, known as Oria. This project satisfies the goal of eliminating the amount of food that goes into household garbage by creating a device that's able to dehydrate food and turn it into compost. The amount of food that goes into a household’s garbage and outgoing water waste is outrageous and food disposal can be a way to reduce that waste. This capstone project was an opportunity to construct a lightweight product that could be placed on a countertop and be easily accessible. The team and client came into an agreement and made it clear this product should be affordable to the customer and still include all components needed.
For the project to be successful, the team found and analyzed any potential problems that the product would face and come up with a low-cost manufacturing solution. The goal was to design, build, and test a prototype food disposal unit capable of both dehydrating and grinding ordinary food waste into an easily compostable and environmentally friendly waste product. This will result in a decrease of food in the household’s waste and outgoing water waste. The research and design solutions apply a multi-autonomous system that can accomplish dehydrating most foods and churning them into compost.