Development of a Personal Cooler

Abstract: This master thesis project within product development is established for Electrolux. The project was a collaboration between the Royal Institute of Technology, Lund University and Electrolux department Healthy Home. The goal with this project was to deliver a concept proposal for Electrolux on a product with the purpose to cool one individual, a concept called “Personal cool”. The project concerns the cooling of one individual, cooling in this case meaning to lower the temperature to achieve a greater comfort for the user. The concepts should consider feasibility as well as usability. The developed concept should be able to be produced within 3-4 years. In order to deliver a feasible concept within the project scope, the developed concept should use existing technologies and components. To achieve the set goal, to deliver a concept proposal for Electrolux, the project’s intention was to answer the following research questions: What technology could be integrated in a personal cool? Which main components can be identified for the chosen technology? What are the requirements for a personal cool? The project included various stages and methods to achieve the delivered result. Activities such as research, market analysis, consumer survey, concept development, calculations, prototypes and CAD-models were implemented. The customer needs and desires were collected and combined with the given project requirements set by Electrolux. The outcome of this resulted in a requirement specification, which was used to eliminate the identified technologies and the developed concepts. The result was to use Peltier Modules as the technology to generate cold for the concept. The main components were identified to be Peltier modules, heat sinks and fans. These were selected after performance calculations. The goal was achieved and the research questions are answered. The results of this project are considered to be successful. The developed concept of a Personal cool includes the selected technology, the main components as well as internal and outer design. Finally, it can be concluded that this project contributes to an innovative concept for Electrolux, when this product category and technology is not existing within the department, Healthy Home, at Electrolux.