My first idea: an Indoor Compsting Machine

Problem Definition

Brazilians are not used to compost their own organic waste. For most part of people, composting is a disgusting task, that takes time and require dedication to be be done. This project aims to create a functional prototype for a Indoor Composter Machine, that makes the composter task as easy as trhow the organic waste in a trash can, without pain.

Customer Requirements

  • To fit well in a small kitchen;
  • Don't smell;
  • To accept all kind of organic waste, including cooked and seasoned food, meet and bones;
  • To be easy to operate and maintain, it means that the composting task will take me few minutes.

    • Product Benchmarking

    I've searched by some comercial indoor composter machines, and I could find some as shown in the pictures above. They use diffent technologies to accelerate the composter process, like heating, shreddering, or even by adding some biological and chemical input. The one that I most like was the ZERA Food Recycler that is beign sold on Indiegogo (ships only to USA) by US$ 1.199,00.

    Idea Sketching

    Based on ZERA Food Recycler, I sketched my own machine, starting by the main systems. Even if I don't know yet the solutions and technologies that I will use in my machine, sketching it was a good exercise to think about geometry and functions. This turns the creation of machines fucntional model a easier task.

    Sketch ilustrating the main parts of the machine

    Functional Model

    To create the machine's functional model I used the black box / transparent box method to think about the main inputs, outputs and functions of my system. I started by the the main function, and then deployed it into subfunctions, as recomended by engineering design literature, such as:

    Indoor Composter Machine main function, with inputs on the left and outputs on the right

    Compleate funcitonal model