Abstract:
For humanity to be able to meet its needs without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their
own, we must create a sustainable and customised service
economy. For all the people of the world to be able to share in
this goal, including both marginal operators in economically
developed countries and most farmers in currently less
economically developed countries, we need to increase
resource productivity by a factor of 10. This paper describes a
conceptual design process in which the designer is looking to
achieve this factor -l0 improvement at a system design level.
Order of magnitude upgrading, on the performanee of existing
products, calls for an innovative approach to the design process.
We outline a methodology, "Trend-Morph-PDS", and
show in a case study how it has been applied to the
development of a ground-water pumping system. This type of
system is in demand in geographically remote areas, where low
well yield rates are typical, and rather complicated wind or
solar pumps are commonly used for these "low-yield-well
pumps".
The large number of products on the market demonstrates
a wide and often conflicting range of trends in terms of
design/development: long life/short life; high efficiency/low
efficiency; problematic maintenance; absence of product range
rationalisation. There is, however, a general trend towards
replacement of mechanical with electrical-electronic systems.
We argue that it would be possible to replace the currently
dominant types of electrically driven submersible pump with a
well designed mechanical system that has approximately twice
the efficiency of its competitors and five times the design life.
We recognise the commercial importance of the initial system
cost, and we see no reason why our system should cost more
than those of our existing competitors. Our case study indicates
that factor 10 improvement in resource productivity is
achievable in this application.
