Road to Personalized Medication

Even though there is a trend for personalized medicine. The majority of the medications are still manufactured in bulk quantities with fix prescription. I would like to propose a scalable custom medication manufacturing facility. The design should be able to fit inside a cargo container. The core component of the design is the pneumatic chemical dispensers with micro-dispensing jet valves.

The container production line would be filled with nitrogen as a low-cost inert gas. There would be no oxygen or water vapor. The small confined space of a container would reduce the cost of establishing this. The supply of raw materials and the removal of the products would be conducted from the sanitation room. This room will ensure the hygiene of the raw materials and remove the oxygen and humidity from them. An automated storage and retrieval system will conduct the material transfer between the two sections of the manufacturing facility.

A water-soluble hemispherical capsule would start its journey inside a moving conveyor system. The hemispherical capsule would than pass beneath different chemicals. If the prescription for the capsule requires that chemical, then the micro jet dispenser will dispense the adequate amount into the capsule. Each capsule would be continuously weighted for a precise formulation. At the end of the conveyor system, the capsule would be sealed and bottled. Adequate QR code would be printed on the bottle and moved into the sanitation section.

Compacting the production inside a container is crucial. This allows establishing distributed manufacturing rapidly. These containers would be placed close to the logistics hubs to reduce the time for the produced medication to reach the patients. Fully automated production line would require minimum servicing. If servicing be needed, the whole container would be towed to a servicing station and replaced by a working one in short order.

Road To Personalized Manufacturing

Even though some people talk about that, in the future the production would be unique for every order. However, talking about something and achieving that is totally different. I also believe in personalized manufacturing would be the future, but I have a roadmap to achieve that goal. It all starts with local manufacturing systems. I had previously written about it. In summary, it is to produce where the demand is. Establish small manufacturing facilities to supply for the local demand. The value adding chain does not need to be 100% local. Localization is the objective there.

Establishing local manufacturing facilities require rapid development and deployment of production lines. This knowhow will be the starting point for the production lines that produce every order separately.

Current Industry 4.0 and similar industrial trends cannot achieve this objective. In order to develop such advanced production lines, key problems need to be solved. We cannot purely rely on AI to design such sophisticated systems. We cannot also rely on the availability of highly skilled engineers to do the job. For me the solution is to design a new generation of modules and components that would simplify the design process. If we cannot find the people to solve the complex problem, then we can simplify the problem so that an average person can easily solve it.

While the production line technology is evolving; the design, management and servicing part of the system can be perfected. Personalized manufacturing would allow the designers to sell their designs worldwide without committing to a company. This mentality can be extended to drug manufacturers as well. An approved chemical can be manufactured worldwide without needing for a brand name and costly marketing campaigns.

İbrahim's Engineering Aikido

Aikido's (合気道) goal is to end conflict non-violently by matching the opponent's force by deflecting strikes rather than overpower one's adversary. I am not an Aikido practitioner, but my Do (way) on dealing with the power of nature have some commonalities with the Do of Aiki. I try to redirect the forces of nature to itself to overpower them without using brute force.

It can be seen on my Blade rocket design. While the classical rocketry tries to overpower the atmosphere and the gravity using brute force. My Blade rocket uses the atmosphere as a free propellant (oxygen), additional propulsion source (bypass augmented air) and lifting body (riding over the shockwaves using the wing like design). This is the atmospheric utilization during the ascent phase of the orbital flight. The descent phase of the journey uses the atmosphere to dissipate the immense speed by skipping and gliding. It also utilizes the air to cool its skin off.

When you start fighting against the nature by brute force. You get hot, loose a lot of energy and become fragile. Short term win does not translate into long term success. Even though the rocket is recovered, its highly battered structures require long and expensive refurbishment.

When you don’t fight but harmonize with the forces of nature, your recovery time would be shorter and your costs would be less.

Finally, in my Mercury lander idea, I turn the immense gravitational force of the sun against itself. This results in a simple and efficient solution to slow down the rocket.

Mercury Lander

Planet Mercury is the closest planet to Earth more frequently than any other planet. However, reaching it takes a long time because of high level of acceleration due to Sun’s gravity. A Mercury missions spends almost 70% or more time trying to decelerate using gravity assists. I would like to propose a propulsion-based deceleration for a Mercury mission to shorten the journey.

This propulsion is only advantageous for missions close to the Sun. The idea is to use Sun’s gravity and heat to counteract its gravity. I will explain my idea on a cassette spaceship module. This idea would work even better on a cylindrical spaceship.

The idea is simple; pressure a liquid, in my case mercury by coincidence, and eject it towards the Sun to decelerate the spaceship. The nose of the spaceship would have dry ice, behind that a piston and behind that liquid mercury. In the middle of this setup, there would be a thin ejector pipe. As the spaceship accelerates, the inertia would push the piston towards the rear of the rocket. In the meanwhile, dry ice would sublimate and turn into gas due to immense heat from the Sun. These two additive forces would push the mercury inside the thin pipe to be ejected towards the direction of movement. Hence, the rocket would be decelerated.

In classical chemical propulsion-based rockets, the accelerated material gets its momentum from the heat generated by the chemical reaction. However, in my design, the Sun is accelerates the ejected material. Therefore, heavier the material, higher the thrust would be. That’s why I opted for mercury. Its liquid form does not allow compression. As a result, all the pressure applied to it goes to accelerating the ejected mercury. Expanding carbon dioxide from dry ice fills up the void behind the piston and pushes it besides the Sun's gravity. In that case, the Sun’s heat is doing the work.

Compared to a methane and LOX rocket, my design produces the same amount of total thrust for half the amount of weight. The high density of mercury also reduces the volume of the propulsion stage considerably.

In the modular deep space mission rocket, the module I proposed now would be used to decelerate the spaceship so that it can directly land on Mercury without spending years for gravity assist deceleration.

House Sweeper Concept

Since my childhood I did the vacuum cleaning at home. I saw so many design flaws on the vacuum cleaners I used. Especially the current trend of cyclone battery powered cleaners with handle heavy designs are completely on the wrong path.

I created my design based on the real-world use cases instead of creating an over engineered fragile and expensive house hold gadget. The main objective of my design is to remove the dust, dirt and hair from the floor and the carpets. All critical parts of the design are contained in the cleaner head section. The handle is just a bar to navigate the cleaner. Even the on/off switch is placed on the cleaning head.

The design is simple. A drum that is covered by high strength nylon velvet to remove dust, dirt and hair from the surface. Nylon is a very durable material and is very positively charged when rubbed on the surface. The drum would have a rubber section on its center to grip the surface better. The drum is connected to the cleaning head using ball bearings for low friction and longevity. The movement of the drum is controlled by the user itself and not by a motor. After the drum picks the unwanted particles from the surface, it would release them when it gets into contact with a PTFE comb. PTFE would be negatively charged which would mechanically and electrostatically remove the particles from the drum surface. The brushless dc centrifugal pc fan would blow these particles toward the dust collector tray. The curved and of this tray would have a filter which lets very fine particles to get through. Due to curvature and the covered top, these particles would immediately settle on the floor. This setup negates the HEPA filters which reduce the efficiency of a vacuum cleaner considerably. A typical battery powered vacuum cleaners raises the fine dust particles from the ground and accelerates them up in the air. If there were no HEPA filter, then the flying up dust would be hazardous to our lungs. However, a fine dust on the floor has no risk for our lungs. In real world case, capturing such dust if you can release them on the floor without steering the air is waste. By the second you open a window, way more dust would fill up the room. Don’t forget that the cleaning is done for a home and not for a semiconductor manufacturing plant.

My house sweeper would be powered by a tablet battery to maintain its low profile. Direct path of air flow and less dense air filters allow good cleaning with small motors and batteries. There is no loss of efficiency due to raising the dust at least a meter from ground and then accelerating in a cyclone setup to separate it. Much more importantly handle heavy designs are susceptible to breakage. Heavy motor and battery structure creates a very high center of gravity. Moment the handle slips from the hands, all the expensive part of a vacuum cleaner is cracked and very expensive servicing would be required. That’s why people are hesitant on handing these gadgets to house cleaners who handle them carelessly.

My design costs way less than the traditional battery powered vacuum cleaners and would experience no breakage problem. Can be safely handed to a careless house cleaner.

LNG Plane Updated

I made some design changes on my LNG VTOL Plane and would like to explain them. I draw the plane from different angles to further clarify its details. The plane utilizes the unified rocket engine I proposed earlier. There would be 8 VTOL and 2 aft engines. All engines would be fed by low temperature turbopumps which have much longer service life than the rocket counterparts and cost way cheaper. This lowers the pressure therefore the weight requirements of the tanks. VTOL engines would utilize LOX as the oxygen source. LOX tank would be embedded inside the LNG tank to have insulation and reduce its weight. Using LOX reduces the weight of the engines and lowers the dead weight on the VTOL. After takeoff there would only be small amount of LOX in reserve for landing. The tandem bi-plane design lowers the cross section for VTOL and increases the total lifting surface area. The lack of engines below the wings and the vertical support on the edges make them very thin and sturdy. As a result, the wings would have less drag than the traditional planes. The vertical supports double as vertical stabilizers and the drag inducing heavy tail stabilizer would be removed from the traditional design.

Only the aft engines, (two because of redundancy), will be air breathing. There would be centrifugal air compressors embedded on the top aft section of the plane to supply air to the main thrust engines. The unified rocket engines create very hot pulsating exhaust gas at the back of the plane. Coupled with the augmented air due to Coandă effect, there would be considerable thrust boost for free. The augmented air would generate after burner effect and low bypass air propulsion. The lack of turbofan engines besides the fuselage creates smooth surface for the air to attach to until the rear of the plane where the unified engines are mounted.

The cargo bay of the plane would be behind the passenger cabin. Unlike the passenger cabin it would be unpressurized. The cargo bay would be removable by a special robotic lift on the ground. Which allows rapid cargo load / unload times without damaging the baggage. The removal of the cargo bay would reveal the air intake pipes and the aft engines. As a result, during cargo processing time the critical parts of the engine can be inspected with ease.

LNG Tank and its details were explained in the previous article. As the plane clears the ground, it would be generating horizontal speed to lower the fuel and LOX consumption of VTOL.

Aviation LNG Tank

One of the primary hurdles in public acceptance of LNG powered plane is the mental image of automotive LPG or CNG tanks. Most people view a pressure tank as a "dumb" steel bottle that either holds or explodes catastrophically. In a car, safety is achieved through brute force; the tank is simply made thick enough to survive a crash. However, in aviation safety must be intelligent.

Automotive tanks (LPG/CNG) are designed for a "worst-case" collision. They have excessive wall thickness to prevent any rupture at all. Because they are uniform cylinders, if the pressure exceeds the material's limit, the tank can fragment in any direction, potentially toward the passengers.

On the other hand, the LNG tank I propose for my VTOL plane would have active geometry and controlled failure path. Instead of making the tank equally strong everywhere, I utilize Aero-Structural Fusing. Engineered composites with integrated weak points and protective cage. Just like the crumple zones of a car to protect the cabin by sacrificing the engine bay, aviation LNG tank would utilize controlled failure paths. By engineering specific frangible sections (structural fuses) on the bottom of the tank facing away from the passengers to dictate the terms of a failure. If the pressure relief valves are overwhelmed, the tank does not explode in the traditional sense. Instead, it punctures at a pre-calculated point. This ensures that the energy, cryogenic liquid, and debris are vectored downward into the atmosphere, while the passenger cabin remains a protected, uncompromised zone.

Additionally, methane gas is very light compared to the air. As a result, any released liquid natural gas would rapidly evaporate and move away the plane without leaving a residue. On the other hand, on a traditional plane if the jet fuel is leaked, it would cling to the fuselage and crawl along the skin toward other areas due to Coandă effect. As a result, in case of an emergency landing, the belly of the plane would be covered by flammable jet fuel and the high temperature turbofan engines nearby would ignite it. That's why planes burst into flames when they emergency land. With LNG, which is at cryogenic temperatures, such scenario would be very unlikely. More importantly, LNG tank can be easily emptied before emergency landing. The specially placed vents on the belly of the plane would double as cold gas thrusters and keep the plane airborne longer. Since LNG expands about 600 times its volume when it turns into gas, that "thruster" effect would actually be quite significant. A "Safety Cushion" of thrust during the most critical moments of a forced descent!