Last few weeks have been really hectic due to upcoming final exams.

I have been able to test my Ecodrifter 2.0 at a few places and rework a bit on it.

Let me share my progress on it. The most interesting part about this device is , the more I test it the more I feel the need for improvement , it is like a vortex completely sucking me in and I love it. 

So the last thing I did was a simulation testing of the device in our society’s water body.

I learnt that I need to add propellers in the outrigger boats too for easier maneuvering. I also planned to add rotary brushes to bring in the plastic that is accumulated at the banks.

After this , I planned to take a real lake or river to test. So I visited a few places. The previous survey that I did before building the device was at a superficial level , my observations very different when I this time with the perspective of taking my boat in, the final design looked like this.

Lake survey

I surveyed the following rivers and lakes for assessing the plastic wastage in the water .

1. Yamuna river through the DND flyover 

2. Hindon river, Delhi 

3. Damdama lake , Sohna , Haryana

4. Small lakes in Rewasan , Haryana 

5. Talab in Nuh , Haryana 

6. Talab in Ghaseda village, Haryana 

The findings were as follows 

1. Most lakes had a lot of plastic on the banks, which gets washed away in the water during rainy season or heavy wind season 1 

2. Rivers were clean in the center , while there was a lot of plastic on the banks 

This plastic could be picked up using my device. 

My first visit was not fruitful, as I had not gone with full preparation. Both the river and lakes were full of sewage and plastic waste, which would require heavy duty gloves to pick , getting into these waters needed gumboots , the whole device needed sanitization after being picked up from the waters. Some of the water bodies were so heavily sewage infested that it was a fool’s errand to try and pick up plastic from there.

Finally we zeroed in on two places

1. Yamuna Barrage , Delhi
2. Jawahar Canal Pump , Rewari, Haryana

Site Testing 1 : Location > Yamuna Barrage

Since my boat is compact , which can be packed and unpacked, it took some time to get the set up ready. By the time it was ready, it was dark, I still tested it and it worked successfully.

Test Result : Passed 

Full video of the test can be seen here.

Observation & Learning : This place had all kinds of plastic and sewage trash . The river was deep , hence our propellers worked well.

One important thing I also learnt was that the placement of the device in the direction of current is helpful .

Site Testing 2 : Location > Jawahar Canal Pump House, Rewari, Haryana

This site was a bit different , it was relatively shallower than the Yamuna barrage , the trash flowing in water  have following things

1. Plastic bags contain remaining parts of pooja like chunni , coconut, murti etc.

2. Sticks , roots , water plants

Test Result : Failed 

Full video of the test can be seen here.

Observation & Learning :

1.  My propellers are not robust and do not generate enough thrust. They got stuck at many places due to sticks and sharp objects in the water. They were struggling when they faced water current and moving along with the direction of water current.

2. The  employees working there told us that you need a boat that is capable of tugging at least 80 kg to 100kg of trash

Next Steps : 

1. upgrade our motor with high rpm motor like at least 6000 rpm

My current propeller got damaged . It made me realise how different is real life testing compared to a contained environment testing,

The employees however appreciated my project. Here is one such appreciation video. It really made my day ! 

So I made the following changes in my model

1. Encased the propeller 
2. Added V-hull design in my boat to cut through the debris

Drawing of the design 

Encase Propellor looks like above. I took the device for another test in the same Jawahar Pump Canal Pump House.

You can see the results here.

As you can see the trash is so thickly woven, there are a lot of weeds and thin sticks entangled with the plastic which is not letting the trash pass through it and collect the trash. 

The propellers need to be stronger to cut through this trash. Nonetheless I manage to collect more than a kg of trash by twisting and turning the boat in different directions.

Here is a self congratulatory video . 

Next step would be to build a stronger propeller to ensure trash collection in this area.