An automated Smart City drainage solution that captures 100% of street plastics and diverts up to 30,000 liters of clean rainwater per hour using IoT monitoring and gravity filtration.
Inspiration:Urban stormwater pollution is a silent crisis. Heavy rains wash plastic bottles, debris, and silt off city streets directly into local rivers, destroying ecosystems. At the same time, millions of liters of pure rainwater are completely contaminated and wasted. We wanted to design a self-sustaining system to fix both problems at once.
What it does:The system is an advanced underground smart filter. Water enters through a custom street grate and drops into a porous mesh bag that traps 100% of plastic trash while letting water flow through. Fine sand and mud sink naturally to a gravity-controlled mechanical trapdoor. Clean water overflows safely through a separate bypass tunnel, routed directly for municipal treatment and reuse.
How we built it:
3D Engineering: Modeled the full multi-stage architecture in Tinkercad, including a high-precision custom street grate.
Visual Blueprint: Enhanced the schematics in Canva to map out the technical flow.
Software Control: Programmed a live IoT dashboard in Scratch with an automated forever monitoring loop.
Physics Validation: Tested the fluid mechanics and gravity sediment separation using a granular simulation in Powder Toy.
Backend Simulation: Developed a structured Python script in Visual Studio Code to model the live sensor database and simulate the 4-second emergency alert system under high telemetry flows.
Challenges we ran into:Aligning the 3D dimensions in Tinkercad to ensure a completely unobstructed inner bypass tunnel required immense precision. We also faced the challenge of translating physical fluid dynamics into logical software loops, making sure that our Scratch scripts, Powder Toy simulations, and Python telemetry synchronized flawlessly with our mathematical models.
Accomplishments that we're proud of:We successfully engineered a multi-layered, functional prototype from scratch that bridges the gap between hardware architecture and software engineering. We are incredibly proud of achieving 100% mechanical efficiency in plastic filtration while maintaining a calculated backup flow capable of recovering 30,000 liters of water per hour under extreme storm conditions.
What we learned:Through this intense build, we mastered multidisciplinary prototyping. We learned how to mathematically validate engineering components, model real-time data flows using both block-based and text-based tools like Scratch and Python, and translate environmental issues into precise, automated Smart City solutions.
What's next for The eco sewer smart bypass:The next step is translating this virtual model into a physical hardware MVP using microcontrollers like Arduino or Raspberry Pi. We plan to integrate actual turbidity and ultrasonic distance sensors into a 3D-printed enclosure to begin real-world testing in local municipality drainage systems.
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