Intelligent Concentrate Mixing With Waste-Flow Quality Detection
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Solution Overview
Problem
Beverage dispensers lack the ability to communicate problems to retail staff, leading to wasted products due to unsatisfactory dispensed beverages, and consumers often dump beverages without informing staff, resulting in lost profits and inefficiencies.
Innovation Solution
A beverage dispense system with sensors and a controller that monitor dispenser components and user feedback to detect quality issues, notify retail staff, and reduce waste by identifying and addressing problems such as incorrect syrup-to-water ratio, water quality, temperature, and carbonation.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of substance
If beverage dispensers operate without monitoring systems, then device complexity is reduced, but beverage quality cannot be detected and waste increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system employs sensors to continuously monitor beverage quality parameters (syrup-to-water ratio, carbonation, temperature) and provides feedback to the control system. When deviations are detected, the system automatically adjusts dispensing parameters or alerts staff, preventing waste from poor-quality beverages while maintaining manageable system complexity through targeted monitoring rather than comprehensive oversight.
Solution Approach 2:
The dispenser system performs self-diagnosis and self-adjustment by automatically detecting quality issues and correcting them without requiring constant human intervention. The system monitors its own performance, identifies problems with syrup delivery or water mixing, and adjusts dispensing mechanisms accordingly, reducing waste while operating with moderate complexity.
2Measurement precision
If sensors and monitoring systems are added to detect beverage quality issues, then beverage quality detection improves, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The monitoring system is divided into separate functional modules, each responsible for specific quality parameters (syrup flow sensors, water flow sensors, carbonation detectors, temperature sensors). This segmentation allows for precise measurement of individual parameters while keeping the overall system manageable, as each sensor type can be independently selected and optimized for its specific function.
Solution Approach 2:
The control system serves multiple functions: it monitors sensor data, analyzes beverage quality, adjusts dispensing parameters, communicates with users, and tracks inventory. This multi-functionality reduces the need for separate dedicated systems for each task, thereby limiting the increase in overall device complexity while maintaining comprehensive quality measurement capabilities.
3Manufacturing precision
If real-time monitoring of syrup-to-water ratio and beverage parameters is implemented, then manufacturing precision of beverage composition improves, but use of energy increases
Solution Approach 1:
Rather than continuous high-power monitoring, the system employs periodic sampling of beverage parameters at critical dispensing intervals. Sensors activate during dispensing events to measure syrup-to-water ratio, carbonation, and temperature, rather than maintaining constant high-energy monitoring, thereby achieving precise composition control with reduced energy consumption.
Solution Approach 2:
The system dynamically adjusts dispensing parameters (syrup flow rate, water flow rate, dispensing speed) based on real-time feedback from sensors. By continuously optimizing these parameters to maintain target beverage composition, the system achieves high manufacturing precision while minimizing energy usage through efficient, adaptive dispensing rather than rigid, high-power operation.
Data Source
AI summary
A system for determining a quality of a beverage can include a flow sensor for coupling with an outlet for waste from a beverage dispenser. The system can also include a controller coupled with the flow sensor for receiving an indication of the presence and/or absence of waste. The controller can be coupled with an actuation mechanism and configured to: receive an indication of an actuation of the actuation mechanism, determine a time associated with the actuation, calculate a volume associated with a stream of waste, determine a time associated with the stream of waste, and correlate a dump of a beverage to the actuation when the calculated volume associated with the stream of waste is greater than a volume threshold and when a difference in time between the time associated with the stream of waste and the time associated with the actuation is less than a time threshold.