Eco Friendly Pod Coffee Machine
Concept design for a college project
For my class, 3MEMS3, we were tasked with designing a pod capsule coffee machine that is more eco friendly than existing designs.
Existing pod coffee machines are environmentally destructive due to their reliance on disposable pods, whether they be made from plastic or aluminum. While there are eco-friendly biodegradable pod designs on the market, they do not represent a large enough market share at the present moment.
Companies such as Keurig and Nespresso offer recycling services for their pods, however, these recycling methods are complex, meaning each customer cannot simply discard their pods in regular recycling bins.
The reason for this is the presence of remaining coffee grounds and thermosetting polymers, such as silicon, in the pods, which act as sealants to keep the coffee grounds fresh. While the plastic and aluminum are recyclable, the sealants are not, and thus, the pod machine manufacturers must recycle the pods themselves. Additionally, the customer must go through the extra effort and hassle of using a separate recycling program, which may not even be present in their area, requiring them to ship their pods.
So why can’t customers separate these sealants from the pods themselves, and then recycle the pods with everything else normally?
Sealants are separated from the main body of the pod through methods involving eddy current electromagnetic separation, heating, or curing.
What if these processes could be scaled down at home, into the machine itself?
I propose a pod coffee machine that includes a reservoir for depleted pods, as shown in the mock up rendering. The reservoir would be filled with the appropriate acids and/or heating elements, and possibly even a miniaturized eddy current separation machine, though this is less plausible for a consumer-priced machine.
With any of these methods, the sealants could be removed from the aluminum or plastic pods within the customer’s own home, allowing them to discard the pods into their own recycling bin without the need for any extra hassle, other than refilling the reservoir and maintaining it by cleaning out residual build up of coffee grounds. This would lead to a higher portion of consumers actively recycling their pods instead of simply tossing them in the bin.
