Energy efficient home appliances
The Need
Best performance to reduce their power consumption and bills.
Energy efficient home appliances for all manufacturers. Consumers are actively choosing products with higher energy ratings for best performance and to reduce their power consumption and bills.
This global home appliances manufacturer wanted to achieve the highest possible energy efficiency rating for their ovens. Balancing this objective with minimising any additional product costs and capital investment required specialist expertise.
The Solution
Technology scouting was used to identify the system bottlenecks.
During the initial investigations it became clear there were technological bottlenecks within some of the subsystems. There were also limitations identified in the manufacturing and assembly processes that needed to be addressed. Any design and material solutions chosen would need to overcome these specific issues as well as improving the energy efficiency.
Technology scouting was used to identify the system bottlenecks and define exactly how they affected the desired outcome. To save time, BlueThink chose an approach based on numerical rather than CFD simulation.
These numerical modelling techniques were successfully applied to analyse the issues and find a suitable resolution.
The concept was then validated using experimental methods, which minimised time and effort, especially in the prototype stage. A number of different skillsets were needed, requiring the expertise of heat and mass transfer engineers and materials experts. The BlueThink Solvers Network were also engaged to find potential suppliers that could support the final solution.
The Result
Improving the energy efficiency of home appliances
Developing energy efficient home appliances is a complex task that impacts many of the product development stages. Updating an established product can sometimes be more challenging than starting from scratch with a new product. Having to work within the parameters of existing parts, materials and production processes can reduce the solution options available.
BlueThink took a systematic approach to evaluate the trade-off between optimising performance and cost.
Thanks to a transfer of existing technology from the industrial oven sector, the final solution was cost effective for the client.
An added bonus was that it also resolved other product issues, including reducing temperature of the external components.
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