QFD&DFMA Application on an Oil/Water Separation Product

Abstract:

When oil fields become old, the proportion of water in crude oil will get higher and higher. Using a traditional bulk separator to extract the water from crude oil has many disadvantages: e.g. high pressure loss, low separation speed, heavy equipment and sensitive to direction. Caltec Ltd. has developed Wx-12, an innovative separator for the oil and gas industry. The device has been tested on offshore platforms and has shown high performance. Currently however, the manufacturing cost of the device is too high making it unlikely to be accepted by market. This project first used QFD to transform the user requirements of Wx-12 into engineering specifications. Then DFA & DFM methods were applied to Wx-12 in order to make it compact and reduce the manufacturing cost. An alternative design for Wx-12 unit was generated according to the results from QFD, DFA and DFM. Alternative materials were also considered to support the alternative designs. Finally alternative designs and alternative materials were verified with the engineers from Caltec Ltd..

• Periodical: Applied Mechanics and Materials (Volume 163)
• Pages: 211-216
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/AMM.163.211
• Online since: April 2012
• Authors: Ti Lu, Yi Du Zhang
• Keywords: DFA, DFM, Product Design, QFD, Water/Oil Separator

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