Blog Entry 7

At long last, this final blog will detail the entire process of my groups chemical product design journey! From ideation to prototyping. 

Product Inception

First is ideation. Before creating any product, my group first needed to identify a problem which we could solve with our chemical product. My group wanted our product to be environmentally friendly. As such, our idea was to take what people would think was waste products and reuse them to serve another purpose which reduces waste.

After some deliberation, my group landed on the idea of extracting fragrance from citrus peels which people discard after eating their fruits. 

Following which, my group did literature reviews to confirm the viability of our idea. We discovered it was possible to extract fragrances when using ethanol to dissolve the chemical, d-limonene, from citrus peels to create a perfume.

Operating principles

Our Product uses 2 main principles, which are:

Leaching - it is used when extracting the fragrance from the citrus peels using alcohol extraction between ethanol and citrus peels.

Drying - it is used when water needs to be evaporated from the citrus peels before alcohol extraction.

Design Specifications

Aspect	Specification Metric (or Quality)	Quantitative Value
Physical	Small design	10 cm x 10 cm x 13cm
	Fan operated by electricity	12 volts
	Lightweight	< 0.8 kg
Functional	Easy to use	-
	Long operation time	24/7
	Ethanol resistant	Excellent
	Water resistant	IP67
	Minimal set-up time	<30 seconds
Others	Inexpensive	< $10

Importance was given to the ease of use and the price of our chemical product as we want to help people reduce wastage and people will be more encouraged to do so if our product is cheap and simple to use.

Thought was also given to the time taken to use the product so that users do not have to keep intervening for the product to work.

Lastly, our product has to be water and ethanol resistant as they are materials which will be put into our product.

Design Sketch and How it works

Before explaining my group's product, here is a sketch of it:

Our product is a two-layered device. The top half of the device has a fan on the side and a built-in grater to cut the citrus peels into smaller sizes and dry them off before putting them into the bottom half of the device which contains the ethanol.

The bottom layer is air tight so as to not leak any of the contents in it.

As for safety measures, we designed a fan cover and a detachable lid to cover parts which may potentially cause harm to the user.

Creating a prototype

Since it is just a prototype, my group made it out of cardboard.

Base of the bottom layer

fan cover

Fan

Base of top layer

After cutting out all the parts, we used hot glue to piece them together.

Side view of bottom layer

Top view of top layer

Here is our prototype put together:

Reflections

I found this module very interesting and practical for my future in chemical engineering. I am sure I will use these skills again in the foreseeable future.