Team Members & Role:
- Tony Truong
- Charlie Paras
- Andrew Tierney
- Gregory Long
- Ayub Farah
Abstract:
The Pioneer Valley Coffee Company was created when CEO and project sponsor Steve Gowa saw that cancer was a huge problem in his home community of New Jersey. He identified high levels of pollution as a significant contributing factor to cancer rates. More specifically, Mr. Gowa saw the link between cancer and the presence of plastics within the body, and sought to reduce this in any way possible. This led to the birth of the Pioneer Valley Coffee Co., which combined Mr. Gowa’s love of coffee with his desire to reduce plastic pollution within the body. The purpose of this company is to create a high quality coffee machine that does not contain any plastics in contact with the water and coffee. Other quality coffee machines often include heavy usage of plastic tubing, even in sections where hot coffee would sit exposed, absorbing plastics and other contaminants. It is possible to find coffee machines that are devoid of plastic, but there are no elegant solutions that provide a plastic free construction with a satisfying and easy user interface.
We have been assigned with creating the control system for this plastic free coffee maker. To achieve SCAA Golden Cup Standard quality coffee, water must be dispensed at 200°F and finish the full brew in 4-6 minutes. Our team’s approach to this problem has been led by designing and fabricating the control system behind the machine to ensure that the user can produce SCA standard coffee while feeling like they are using a high quality machine. Our group has designed this system with redundant fail safes and safety mechanisms in order to create a safe consumer product. In this process we worked closely with team 1504, who were tasked with creating the housing and analyzing the fluid control and thermodynamics for the coffee machine. Together we have created a quality all metal coffee machine with zero plastic to water exposure, which is able to be used as the basis of a commercial run of coffee makers to be produced by the Pioneer Valley Coffee Company.
