Grian Water Ltd
Grian Water Ltd have developed, MyGug, a complete food waste treatment system that integrates into domestic/small business settings, operating in all weather and climate conditions.
The system is fully automated and insulated, providing a convenient and efficient food waste disposal solution, which is environment friendly, produces no odour and has no vermin issues. There are two by-products from MyGug: biogas for cooking and liquid fertiliser.
Prior to engagement with WiSAR, an initial MyGug prototype had been operational for 18 months, during which the unit had treated approximately 1 tonne of food waste and produced the equivalent of 100kg of bottled gas.
Problem to Be Solved
The controls of the initial MyGug prototype utilised a Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) which is prohibitively expensive for the target sector. Grian Water requested WiSAR to design a replacement control board to be based on a low-cost microcontroller. The new control board needed to include WiFi connectivity with cloud storage, to monitor the digester’s performance over time.
WiSAR Solutions
Funded by 2 Enterprise Ireland Innovation Vouchers, WiSAR initially scoped out the requirements and hardware specification in conjunction with the client. Once the specifications had been configured and agreed, schematics and a printed Circuit Board (PCB) layout were developed by WiSAR researchers, to facilitate firmware development and testing.
With the initial hardware specifications completed, the firmware was developed to meet the project objectives. Concurrent development and testing facilitated revisions to the embedded system, and 5 PCBs were then outsourced for production, with component population taking place in-house. The first of the developed PCB’s was then installed in a domestic application.
In addition to the hardware and firmware development, a basic database and web interface was implemented through an open source IOT platform.
Impact & Benefits
The work carried out by WiSAR has provided the client, Grian Water Ltd, with a more cost-efficient PCB prototype, better meeting the needs of the target end user.
Going forward, a number of the prototype PCBs will be installed in domestic applications for longer term testing and to gather overall performance data.
Beyond this initial funding, the next stage of works will be to refine the developed PCB to further reduce the size and cost of each unit. Additional firmware features will also be developed to allow remote control of Mygug settings such as thresholds and timings of heaters/pumps.
