Design Life-Cycle

Heqi Zhao

Des040

Professor: Christina Cogdell

Group member: Vector, Danial

Raw Materials of Phone cases

As phones are well-spread, people are consciously buying phone cases to protect their phones from damage. Nowadays, what phone cases can do did not stay at only protection, but also decoration in people’s daily outfit, which means phone cases have more demands among people. And based on the increasing requirements, companies had started to try out different new materials that satisfies people’s demands. Nevertheless, people are picky on phone cases, so the raw materials of the purchased phone cases are still depend on which type of phone cases people buy. It depends on whether people have more preference of the protection phone cases could provide, the outlook of the phone cases, or the prices. In Spigen (a brand of phone case), raw materials acquisition and manufacturing, processing, and formulation of the best selling case is Nano-hydrophobic, ultra hybrid, and etc.. And before selling it, most of the raw materials are made in a lab and shipped by planes or trucks. After people have used it, the reuse and the maintenance, most phone cases don’t have that since one specific phone case only fits one specific type of phone, and it doesn’t cost much, so most of the time, people rather buy a new one than pay a lot of attention on protect the phone case and people will throw the old ones away. And there’s hardly recycling and waste management for nano-hydrophobic phone cases.

Even though preferences of people have a great impact on raw material requisition, since the type that sells the best could bring the biggest profit for the company. And also because people aren’t purchasing one specific brand of phone cases. So that companies did not always producing what consumers like the most, instead companies have their own type of phone case that they produce the most. For example, the nano-hydrophobic phone cases. companies can’t change all the time, they need to concern about transportation, manufacturing, and purchasing of raw materials. So the Spigen’s best seller stays as nano-hydrophobic and ultra hybrid. Hybrid phone cases contains two parts, the inner soft part and the outer hard part. The soft part is made by silicon, and the outer part is made of plastic. Moreover, nano-hydrophobic phone case is made of non-polar materials with a low affinity to water, for instance, alkanes, oils, fats, and greasy substances in general. Hydrophobic materials has a ultra durability and self-healing nature when molecules of the coating are scarped away, other molecules migrate to fill in the gaps. The coating has the ability to restore water resistance gyndreds if tunes when damaged. In tests, the materials was a braided, scratched, burned, plasma cleaned, flattened, sonicated and chemically attacked after each assault the material self healed and continued being water resistant. Which means hydrophobic phone cases could give users enough of protection on their phones.

As mentioned, the manufacturing of nano-hydrophobic and ultra hybrid seem to be a great deal while producing phone cases. Hydrophobic material can be created by coating a surface with wax, oil, or grease. Or using nanoengineering to help create a unique, nanopatterned textured surface. Based on these processes, the materials for a waterproof phone case has been made. And in hybrid phone case, silicon and plastics have different manufacturing processes. The process to make silicon is to heat silica and coke in a submerged electric arc furnace to high temperatures in a reduction process. In this process, metal carbides usually form first at the lower temperatures. Then using refining processes to improve purity of the silicon. And the plastic that made the outer part is made from raw materials like natural gas, oil or plants, which are refined into ethane and propane.

And for the transportation, Supposing there are two parts of transportation, one is before raw materials have been processed, and one is before raw materials have been made to a phone case. Silica, before it has been made to silicon, can be carried using fume hood, or buckets. And can be transported by cars. Some of the wax, oil, grease came from farms, most times they will be put into plain paper bags, or jars. And be transported by trucks, and cars. After the materials that phone cases needed are created, they have to be sent to the factories in South Korea to be made into the phone cases. To carry silicon in factories, people usually use sacks and wooden boxes. And after phone cases are be made, they will be shipped to the world where people consumes their phone cases through planes, trucks, ships, and etc.

Hybrid materials after use will either be returned to disposal, or recycling or be put to municipal waste and then be dumped to landfill; If the material has been recycled, it either could be refined and can be used again or the material could be recovered and put into other use. Or hybrid materials will be put in storage. And for other possibilities, hybrid materials will be put to municipal waste that contains more than eighty percent of hazardous investment loss, and then dumped to landfill. Hydrophobic phone cases do not have a clear way of recycling. It is more depending on people that uses hydrophobic phone cases. Moreover from another perspective, since one phone case only serves one type of phone, so people hardly reuse and maintain their phone cases since first it doesn’t cost a lot, and a used phone case can’t be use in other places. Nevertheless, used phone cases might not be able to serve another phone, it could still be use in other ways like a container of soap.

 To sum up, phone case happened to be only a small part of our life, and people aren’t paying enough of attention onto it because the internet wasn’t as good as nowadays. But now, phone cases are gradually playing a more and more important role as our daily life’s condiment, since the appearance of phone has a sudden increase. People buy phone cases with the pattern on it that they like, people buy phone cases that could protect their important property, their phones, and people also started to DIY their own phone case to get a sense of accomplishment, but more importantly, using something made by themselves also make them happy. However, while people area enjoying themselves by their phone cases, materials that are used are still a big part that people need to pay attention to that we need to question ourselves. For example, will burning silica create some bigger problems? Sometimes the answers don’t matter, what is more important is to keep the life cycle in mind. Using materials that are environmental friendly, and renewable. Choosing products that will not pollute environment. And trying our best to create a brighter tomorrow.

Cited Page

1. Ullah, Mehran, and Biswajit Sarkar. “Recovery-Channel Selection in a Hybrid Manufacturing-Remanufacturing Production Model with RFID and Product Quality.” International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, 18 July 2019, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0925527319302543.

2. “Something You Want: Spigen.” Spigen Inc, https://www.spigen.com/.

3. “How Are Plastics Made?” This Is Plastics, 16 June 2021, https://thisisplastics.com/plastics-101/how-are-plastics-made/.

4. “Silicon.” How Products Are Made, http://www.madehow.com/Volume-6/Silicon.html.

5. “What Is a Hybrid Cell Phone Case?” BURGA, https://www.burga.com/blogs/news/what-is-a-hybrid-cell-phone-case.

6. Manufacturingdotnet. “Manufacturing Minute: Hydrophobic Material.” YouTube, YouTube, 18 Apr. 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGmC1MX-XsI.

7. Mein, Suzi. “What Is Hybrid Manufacturing?” Firetrace International, https://www.firetrace.com/fire-protection-blog/hybrid-manufacturing.

8. 2012, G.P. ThomasNov 22. “Hydrophobic Materials – New Innovations.” AZoM.com, 24 May 2019, https://www.azom.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=7881.

9. Stimpson, Jennifer. “How to Get Candle Wax off Any Surface.” This Old House, This Old House, 21 Feb. 2020, https://www.thisoldhouse.com/tools/21015161/how-to-get-wax-off-any-surface.

Victor Romo

Professor Cogdell

DES 40

2 December, 2021

Life Cycle Research Paper

Cell phones are the piece of technology that receive the most amount of wear and tear throughout their existence, and people want to protect their phones from this abuse, which is why most users buy a phone case in order to reduce direct damage to the phone. There are many styles of phone cases that vary in weight, color, and phone model, giving the customer a wide variety of choices to match their preference. The most common type of phone case is the clear-colored case. It is simple, rugged, and generally cost efficient for the user. Companies such as Spigen are experts in designing and manufacturing these cases since they have experience within the industry and have appealing prices. Customers don’t like spending lots of money on a phone accessory, so a cheap phone case is of their interest. But most of the time they don’t think about the amount of energy that is required to get these phone cases. A phone case’s embodied energy is most abundant during the extraction of raw materials and the processing of its plastic composites, as well as in the distribution section, making these seemingly cheap products have a higher cost that the consumer doesn’t take into consideration.

The first step in creating these cases is extracting the minerals necessary to make them. The most crucial materials needed in phone cases are silicone and Thermoplastic Polyurethane (TPU). Silicone is made from silica, which is mined using large excavators that break apart large rocks on the sides of mountains and then load them up on dump trucks. These machines require a lot of energy to operate and under normal conditions a dump truck will require 4 gallons of fuel per hour, while an excavator will use up around 12 gallons of diesel fuel per hour. This is assuming the mining site is there already, otherwise more energy would be required to create the large open-pit mine. For TPU the extraction process is different. Since the composite is mostly made of plastic the most energy intensive process is extracting oil or natural gas from the ground in order to create plastic. There are many processes which can be used, such as vertical drilling, horizontal drilling, or fracking. These techniques are complex and require high energy use since they operate very large machinery in order to reach the resource, and need large oil tanker ships to transport them, these tankers use up 63,000 gallons of fuel per day. Large amounts of energy are necessary to extract materials and transport them, but manufacturing these materials into usable composites is also very energy demanding.

The manufacturing stage is the step where the material ores get processed into usable materials and then into composites. Firstly the raw ores must be processed in order to separate the desired material from the excess ones. The trucks put the unprocessed materials into an industrial furnace that heats the quartz and sand to 1800 degrees Celsius, resulting in pure silicon. These furnaces are powered by burning coal and wood chips, and it takes about 1500 pounds of coal to reach the necessary heat temperature to do this process. This pure silicon then is combined with other materials such as methyl chloride and is once again heated in order to mix them together. But this doesn’t give you silicone composite yet, first it must undergo a distillation process which consists of heating it to certain boiling points, once again using large amounts of coal. Silicone is a complex material to process, but specific plastics such as TPU are even harder to produce since they have various chemical reactions. Without getting into too many chemical details, TPU is made out of a soft segment composed of polyester giving it flexibility, and a hard segment giving it toughness. This plastic is then chemically combined with silicone in order to create the composite that is used in phone cases. It is then pushed at high temperatures through a mold of the specific phone case model and then cooled off in order for it to harden and maintain that shape. With the phone case now created it is time for it to get delivered to demanding customers.

In order to get the phone case from the factory to the customer, the manufacturer has to organize large hauler trucks to carry its products to a warehouse, it’s most likely that it will be an Amazon warehouse due to their rapid increase in recent years. These warehouses store the phone cases before customers have ordered any, using complex algorithms that anticipate the amount of demand for that specific product. Once a customer orders the phone case it is diligently selected, wrapped in a small box, wrapped in plastic bubble wrap, taped all the way around, and then packaged inside another box. This process has many life cycles within itself that we will not discuss, but it is important to keep in mind when balancing the product versus the materials needed for it. This box is then put into heavy hauling trucks which have very low fuel efficiency, averaging around 6.5 miles per gallon. Meaning that in order to get a product from a warehouse in Sacramento to San Francisco it would require 585 gallons of fuel. This is assuming that the product is being shipped within state, if it’s being shipped out of state or even outside of the country it will require additional transportation. If the shipment is from China and the destination is in the U.S. then an airplane will dispense 36,000 gallons of fuel during its flight. Then a cargo van will have to deliver the ‘last mile’ of the phone case so the customer can put it to use.

Unfortunately for phone cases, they are one of the most abundant single-use products today. They are designed to fit a single phone model, made at specific sizes, by a specific brand. There aren't many phone cases that can be used for two different phones, so once you’ve used your phone case and bought a new phone, you will need another phone case. There are also few options to recycling a phone case after it has gone through its use cycle. Silicone is able to be recycled and used into other products, but most companies don’t take care of their products and aren’t willing to deal with recycling them, leaving this simple, yet intricate product, go to waste.

Most people think that these cheap-to-buy phone cases are simply a gimmicky plastic accessory for their phone that then becomes a throwaway object. But few realize the amount of energy that is invested into making it. From running the machinery that excavates the minerals, to processing the materials into composites, to transporting it at large scales, it all mounts up to a big energy consumption for such a small product. Trucks use gallons of fuel in an hour, industrial furnaces combust tons of coal daily, planes drain thousands of gallons of fuel in a trip, all for the customer to buy a phone case that costs $4.99. This seemingly cheap product has a much higher cost than consumers take into consideration.

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