Fluid storage reservoir
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Solution Overview
Problem
Volatile components like ethanol in surface cleaners and hand sanitizers permeate through the walls of fluid storage reservoirs made from inexpensive plastics, reducing the product volume and concentration over time, making the product unsuitable for use or sale within extended storage periods.
Innovation Solution
A fluid storage reservoir design featuring a first container with a volatile component and a second container containing a sacrifice material, both sharing an intermediate transfer wall with controlled permeability, allowing the volatile component to transfer between containers while escaping to the atmosphere, thereby maintaining the product's concentration and shelf life.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of manufacture
If thin flexible plastic walls are used to minimize material cost and amount, then manufacturing cost and material usage are reduced, but permeability to volatile components increases causing product loss
Solution Approach 1:
A second container filled with sacrifice material (ethanol or ethanol-containing fluid) is introduced as an intermediary between the product and the external environment. The intermediate transfer wall allows ethanol to move from the product container to the sacrifice material container, preventing direct loss to the atmosphere while maintaining product concentration.
Solution Approach 2:
The intermediate transfer wall is designed with controlled permeability to ethanol, allowing selective passage of the volatile component while maintaining structural integrity. This porous structure enables the sacrifice material to receive ethanol from the product without requiring impermeable materials.
2Duration of action of stationary object
If extended storage periods are allowed for distribution and use, then product availability and market reach are improved, but volatile component concentration decreases making product ineffective
Solution Approach 1:
The second container with sacrifice material acts as an intermediary reservoir that maintains the ethanol concentration gradient. By continuously receiving ethanol from the product through the permeable intermediate wall, it prevents net loss from the product, thereby preserving product concentration over extended storage periods.
Solution Approach 2:
The natural tendency of ethanol to permeate through plastic walls, which is normally harmful, is converted into a beneficial process. The sacrifice material container captures the permeating ethanol, preventing its loss to the atmosphere and effectively using the permeation phenomenon to maintain product stability.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
This design extends the shelf life of products containing volatile components by managing the transfer and escape of ethanol, ensuring the product remains effective and suitable for use over longer storage periods without significant concentration loss.
Implementation Method 1
an intermediate transfer wall with controlled permeability, allowing the volatile component to transfer between containers
Implementation Method 2
Ethanol is a volatile component. A hand sanitizer containing ethanol can be used by wetting one's hands with the hand sanitizer, briskly rubbing one's hands together until they become dry due to the evaporation of the hand sanitizer, notably, the ethanol at room temperatures.
Data Source
AI summary
A method of storing a product that contains a volatile component within a fluid storage reservoir formed with enclosing walls having a permeability that permits limited passage of the volatile component from the storage reservoir to the atmosphere, preferably with the method increasing the shelf life of the product stored, and a fluid storage reservoir with a first container containing the fluid product to be dispensed including the volatile component and a second container containing a sacrifice material including the same volatile component with an intermediate transfer wall shared by both the first container and the second container for transfer of the volatile component between the first container and the second container. The product preferably is a surface cleaner or a hand sanitizer including 30 to 95% ethanol.