ME 4242 Team 36 The Perfect Crawfish

Engineering Specifications Report

Team Members
Lauren Becnel, Steven Fulkerson, Jared Hill, Ashley Martinez, Raymond McAlpine, Cara Oliver,
Grant Thomas, Joshua Tisdale, and Lisa Vu

Sponsor: Patrick Laley (Phillips 66)

Faculty Advisors: Dr. Ram Devireddy, Dr. Jerry Trahan

Table of Contents
Objective Statement

Background Information

Potential Customers

Functional Requirements

Qualitative Constraints

Measurable Engineering Specifications

Competing/Existing Technologies

Preliminary Schedule/Timeline

References

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Appendices

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Objective Statement
Design a portable crawfish boiling system with a consistent and repeatable process,
while minimizing user input and waste.

Background Information
According to LSU AgCenter, Louisiana leads the nation, producing more than 99 percent
of the domestic crawfish supply every year. With over 100 million pounds produced annually in
Louisiana, 70 percent of which is consumed in the state itself, it is no surprise that a large
percentage of the harvest ends up in crawfish boils all throughout Louisiana. Cooking crawfish
at a boil usually entails a good deal of manual input from the cook. Before boiling the crawfish,
the crawfish must be soaked in water to be cleaned. The water must then be drained, and the
crawfish is typically soaked again in fresh water. There are many methods used to cook
crawfish, though the most common involves boiling a 35-40 pound sack in boiling water. The
cook must input the seasoning and additional ingredients at certain times during the boil. The
crawfish and other ingredients then soak for some time before they are ready. Currently, there
is no portable system that automates the cooking process. Our sponsor, Phillips 66, has asked
for a process that cleans, boils, and dispenses the crawfish automatically with minimal user
input.

Potential Customers
Boiling crawfish is a long-standing Cajun tradition in Louisiana, which makes the
automated crawfish cooker a very valuable product with many potential customers. The
automated crawfish cooker must fit the needs of the customers. One of the most important

customers of this product is the sponsor, Phillips 66. When designing the product, the goals
and deliverables Phillips 66 wants to incorporate will be given top priority. Some other
potential customers are restaurants, caterers, and residents of Louisiana who boil crawfish.
After visiting multiple restaurants in the Baton Rouge area and surveying residents who are
regulars in boiling their own crawfish, the automated crawfish cooker is a new technology that
could benefit those who boil multiple sacks of crawfish at a time. The cooker will take the
manual workload or labor off of the cookers, which could in turn make the process more
efficient. Because the automated crawfish cooker has many different design aspects, different
manufacturing or sales facilities may be interested in the different processes included in the
product: the automated fuel system, transportation method of the crawfish, purging system,
and the testing techniques of the seasoning and water levels. Manufacturers and repairmen
are some of the other potential customers. These customers would be more concerned with
ease of manufacture and repair than the function and features of the product. Also, the
teachers and advisors of the class are other potential customers. They will provide feedback in
regards to this product throughout the design, development, and manufacturing stages, so it is
important that they support and understand the concepts and purpose of each process in the
automated crawfish cooker system.

Functional Requirements
The functional requirements are determined by the needs of the customers. The
system must cook the crawfish using an automated, safe, portable, and reliable design. The
main goal of this system is to automate the cooking process. An automated cooking system is

one that cleans, cooks, and transports the crawfish to and from each stage of the process with
minimal user input. The user should only be required to assemble the structure, load the
crawfish, and input the desired settings for cooking the crawfish. To make the system user
friendly, the system must be portable. The system should be easy to assemble, a manageable
size, and easy to store to make sure the device can be portable.
Along with automating the cooking process, the system needs to be able to produce a
consistent tasting product, which will be The Perfect Crawfish. Multiple batches should be
able to be cooked, achieving a similar taste each time. Safety is another important function of
the system. This system includes safety hazards, such as boiling water and high temperatures
from a burner. All of these safety hazards must be addressed in the design. The objective tree
shows an organized view of the functional requirements. Refer to Appendix A to view the
objective tree.

Qualitative Constraints
The qualitative constraints were ascertained using the functional requirements. For the
design to meet the automated process functional requirements, the system needs to prepare
the crawfish, boil the crawfish, add in appropriate amounts of seasoning and other additional
ingredients, and transport the crawfish from preparation to boil to serve. The only manual
requirements will be the assembly of the system and the loading of ingredients, water, and
fuel. Multiple sacks should be able to cook before adding in more seasoning, additional
ingredients, water, and fuel. The design will use water and fuel efficiently to achieve this.

The design also has weight and size constraints to meet the portability and assembly
functional requirements. The individual pieces should be light enough for two people to easily
lift and carry. The pieces must also fit into an average truck bed when deconstructed. The
pieces should require little or no tools for assembly, and assembly time should be kept to a
minimum. The assembly instructions should be simple, brief, and easy to understand.
To provide a consistent taste to the customer, the system must automatically correct
any deviation from a certain seasoning to water ratio. The boil will need to be continually
measured to ensure a consistent taste. Besides consistent taste, the customer also requires the
device be safe for all users. The assembly set up should minimize pinch points and sharp edges.
The design must prevent boiling water from spilling or splashing on the user. The fuel system
must have an automatic shut off if the temperature reaches unsafe levels.

Measurable Engineering Specifications

The various engineering specifications were based on the customer and functional
requirements of the design. Researching common crawfish boiling methods gave reasonable
estimations on which values certain specifications can be and were chosen to maximize the
overall efficiency of the design while still meeting the requirements.
The total time required to receive the first cooked sack of crawfish will be 1 hour. This
time will include initial setup of the machine and cooking time of the first sack. The setup time
of the machine by two individuals with knowledge of the system will be no more than 10
minutes. The remaining 50 minutes will be used for the cooking cycle. Each cooking cycle will
include loading the inputs and starting the process which includes purging, boiling/soaking, and

dispensing the finished product. This cooking cycle should be repeatable and take no longer
than 50 minutes to complete.
This system should be portable and easy to use, which necessitates a limit on the total
weight of the system. The limit on the total weight of the system will be 125 pounds. This
weight will include all of the parts of the machine itself and will exclude weight from external
components or resources such as a fuel or water tank. Each subpart of the system will need to
be less than or equal to fifty pounds in order to allow the user to safely carry.
The system will be limited in its energy consumption. The total electric power
consumption for cooking three to four sacks should be comparable to a typical household
appliance. For this reason, the system will be designed to consume less than 1500 Watts of
electrical power. The amount of propane use will be dependent on variables such as the type
of burner, how many jets in the burner, and the size of the cooking pot. These variables will be
rendered to allow the user to boil five to six batches on one full propane tank (approximately
double the users requirement for input into the system).
Limiting user input is an objective of the system design. The system should be able to
cook three to four sacks without user input on seasoning portioning or cooking/soaking times.
The user will be required to load the initial inputs (water, seasoning, cooking preferences)
before starting the system. The cooking process will be fully autonomous after the initial input,
and after three to four batches, the input process will need to be redone. For a more extensive
view of the relationship between the functional requirements, constraints, and engineering
specifications refer to the House of Quality in Appendix B.

Competing/Existing Technologies
Currently, there are no existing automatic crawfish boiling systems available for
customers to buy off-the-shelf. There is one patent that exists today that relates to an
automated boiling system. The name and number of this patent is Automated Apparatus and
System for Cooking, Drying, and Peeling Shellfish Products and US 7179160 B2 respectively.
The diagram is shown in Figure 1 below.

Figure 1: Patent Diagram

The patent is for a system that cooks, dries, and peels shellfish. Other than harvesting the
shellfish meat, the patented apparatus cooks the shellfish in a brine mixture of salt and
water, and the flavored brine is used to make seafood broths and seafood flavored salts. This
patent has some similar functions to our project, but it does not meet many of our customers
requirements. The patent does not include a purging or cleaning system for the shellfish,
adjustable input variables with automated seasoning and water input processes, or portability
and weight constraints.
There are no other automated boiling systems that exist, but there are other existing
technologies for the different processes involved in the automated crawfish cooker system,

such as the purging process, transportation method, and the fuel or heating system. The
Outdoor Cajun Cooking Company by Toepfers Manufacturing is the only company known to
date that designs and constructs an automated purging apparatus that soaks crawfish then
transports them on a conveyor belt to a showering system to increase the quality of cleanliness
of the shells of the crawfish. This design does not fit in with the weight constraints of 125 lbs.
for the automated crawfish cooker and does not have a transportation method from the purge
process to the boiling pot. The purging system can be shown below in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Outdoor Cooking Cajun Company Purging System

The different fuel systems that exist to boil crawfish are solarflo burners, gas burners
filled with natural gas or propane, and an induction burner. The Outdoor Cajun Cooking
Company also manufactures the solarflo burner. The solarflo gas jet burners create a
combustion chamber, which provides a high temperature flame and high BTUs in a small

amount of space. Natural gas and propane burners are the typical fuel systems for at home
crawfish cookers. The burner is hooked up to a tank and generates a flame to heat up products
using the gas that is inside of the tank. An induction burner heats by magnetic induction instead
of a flame by using a coil of copper wire and passing an alternating electric current through it.
These three burners have great technological features, but they are not automated and
require manual use to start and stop the burner when needed. Another company that
specializes in crawfish cooking is Custom Crawfish Cookers. This company manufactures and
sells crawfish boiling pots that incorporate a transportation method from the boiling to the
serving process by a basket connected to the boiling pot on hinges and a handle used to
manually flip the basket over when serving the crawfish. This system is great for heat safety
because it contains heat in an enclosed area, but the cooker is not automated and is very large
and costly for the budget of the automated crawfish cooker. Sammys Grill in Baton Rouge is
the closest automated transportation system that exists. They have an electric motor winch
system that lowers and raises the crawfish basket into and out of the boiling pot. This system
does not, however, transport the crawfish from the purging process to the boiling pot and
requires a person to start the motor instead of a control system.

Preliminary Schedule/Timeline
The teams timeline was chosen to give the team time to refine and meet the various
class requirements. Each subsystem of the design was separated throughout the team to
appropriately manage the time spent on each part. All subsystems are reliant on each other
therefore time was given for meetings to exchange information and ideas to allow each

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subsystem to adjust their design accordingly. The timeline below shows the dates which the
teams personal goals will be completed and the individual assignments for each objective.
Refer to Appendix C for the teams Gantt Chart.

9/23/15 - Finalize Ideation/Conceptual Design and decide on preliminary design

10/3/15 - Complete Engineering Specifications Report
10/5/15 - Finish Mid-Term slides and begin preparing for presentation
9/18/15 - 10/13/15 - Work on individual assignments
10/1/15 - 11/11/15 - Design Drawings
11/11/15 - 11/28/15 - Project Poster
11/18/15 - 11/28/15 - Final Presentation/Final Report

References:
1. "Crawfish Facts - Cooking Louisiana." Crawfish Facts - Cooking Louisiana. N.p., n.d. Web.
Oct. 2015.
2. "Automated Apparatus and System for Cooking, Drying and Peeling Shellfish Products."
Google Patents. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Oct. 2015.
3. "Solarflo Products." SolarFlo. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Oct. 2015.
4. "OUTDOOR CAJUN COOKING." Home Page. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Oct. 2015.
5. "Custom Crawfish Cookers." The Crawfish Company. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Oct. 2015.

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Appendix A: Objective Tree

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Appendix B: House of Quality

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Appendix C: Gantt Chart