New Product Ideas for Clean Water and the Environment
Prof Lupion and Bambox Team: Jenna Armband, Zoe Beitzel, Benjamin Davis and Stephen Klein
Product Design student presentations featured new product ideas ranging from non-plastic food containers to bio reactors for H2 production.
Published January 19, 2022
Teams of chemical engineering senior students spent the fall 2021 semester developing and designing products centered two themes: “Environmental solutions for today's activities” and “Water purification in remote locations”.
Months of ideating, researching, and analyzing culminated in final reports presented during the last week of the course "CE404 Product Design". Fourteen teams of students presented their product’s unique features and well as their proposed business models. The innovative products ranged from biodegradable non-plastic food containers to novel H2 production technologies, fuel cells and economical water filters for poor communities in Africa.
The class is led by UB CBE Assistant Professor of Teaching Monica Lupion. It is designed to give its students a strong sense of what is involved in taking a product all the way from brainstorming ideas to a final product design and a basic business plan. Along the way, students build a strong sense of teamwork and learn to collaborate effectively.
Bambox for Food Storage
One final presentation that got lot of attention was a bamboo box with interior beeswax lining for food storage. Because of the material nature, this product is 100% biodegradable, and have the additional benefits of being naturally antifungal, antibacterial, antimicrobial and waterproof, which make it a perfect choice as an ecofriendly food container.
Semiportable Ceramic Water Filter System
Access to clean water is taken for granted in our own lives, but it is a universal human need and right which is currently denied to millions. It is with this in mind that one of the teams focused on a product with the power to help those in need effectively and cheaply. The team developed a ceramic water filter system specially designed for remote communities in East Africa. The device has the potential to be a life saver for many people, since it is a simple, affordable, scalable, easy to implement filter that can provide quality water in poor water supply communities. The “ceramic water filtration system costs a fraction of its competitors price while still providing high-quality water filtration”, the team says.
Daniel Lord, Andrew Thompson, Elizabeth Haddad and Paul Neff developed a semiportable ceramic water filter system for remote locations in East Africa.
