Week 3A

 Third week of Introduction to Chemical Product Design.

4th May 2021

Welcome once again to this week's documentation!

SCAMPER

This week we learnt about a method that is quite effective in coming up with new ideas, and that method involves the acronym SCAMPER.

S- Substitute: Substituting part of the problem/product for something else

C- Combine: Combining two or more parts of a problem or opportunity to achieve different products to enhance synergy

A- Adapt: Adapting parts of the problem/product to remove problems or changing the nature of the product/process

M- Modify: Modifying part or all of a current situation, or to distort it in an unusual way

P- Put to Another Use: How we might be able to put our current solution/product/process to other purposes, or thinking of what we could reuse form somewhere else in order to solve our own problem

E- Eliminate: Eliminating various parts of the product/process and finding out what happens

R- Reverse: Reversing parts of the product/process and performing them in a different order

Using this model and with our base idea of a cold brew coffee maker, we had some help from our lecturer and came up with a few ideas

Design 1 is a design of a coffee machine with its water tank on the top of the machine which allows the water to slowly drip down into a filter where it leeches the compounds sought for in a cold brew coffee before falling into the cup

Design 2 is a design of a coffee machine with a motor-powered stirrer in it. This allows for stirring of the coffee grounds with water which allows for a faster brewing time for a cold brew

Design 3 is a design of a coffee machine with an internal circulation system which helps promote better mixing which lowers the brewing time

Design 4 which is not in the picture is a design where there is a depressurisation chamber where the coffee is brewed which is researched to achieve a cold brewed coffee at a much faster timing

Analysis

Before we are able to go into the lab to implement these ideas, we have to first choose which ideas are feasible. Hence, we have to put these ideas on a Feasibility Analysis Checklist.This checklist helps us choose which ideas are feasible and which are not.

From then, we have chosen 3 ideas that are the most feasible. Next, we must first use the COWS decision matrix to determine which idea is the most suitable to our objective which is the cold brew coffee machine.  

Therefore, by using the COWS decision matrix, we have found out that the most suitable chemical device that suits our objective should be the Low Pressure Cold Brew Coffee Machine. 

That is all for our documentation in week 3A. See you again next time where we will be in the practical lab where we would be deconstructing and deconstructing a coffee machine!