Design and manufacture of a low-cost mechanism for compacting used oil filters

Used automotive oil filter disposal is a real and increasing problem in the United States. With over 450 million oil filters sold each year, and 80% of used filters thrown into landfills, this waste represents a significant toxic waste problem for the country. There are a number of economic and technological challenges in improving the overall rate of proper disposal of these filters, one of which is a recycling and disposal system that currently provides monetary incentives for crushing, rather than cleaning these filters. This paper extends previous research done by a group of MIT students into a low cost device for effective compaction of used oil filters. Testing is done on compacting heads of various shapes to determine crushing geometries to improve volume reduction for a given load. As a result, a sample system is designed and presented which is estimated to achieve at least 15% compaction of used filters using only 1000 lb-force for less than $200 in retail parts.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Mechanical Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2008

Author dc:creator

• Kosoglow, Richard D

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• David Wallace.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/45823

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/45823