Engineer Okorie Sunday’s Innovation Cascade: From Nigerian Ingenuity to Global Technological Impact
Engr. Sunday Okorie is a Nigerian by birth who has been enthusiastic about machines since his tender age. He was fond of making locally fabricated toy cars with empty cans and D.C motors from broken cassette players at his tender age, which was also a testament that he loved machines right from his tender age. Due to his passion for machines, he was able to acquire a Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Ado-Ekiti (UNAD), Nigeria.
He further pursued a Master’s Degree in the same field of Mechanical Engineering at the prestigious Liaoning University of Technology (LUT) in China, where he strengthened his mastery in his field of study and graduated as one of the best students of his class with distinction.
As a result of his Expertise and in-depth knowledge of Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) during his industrial training at KIA Motors, where he was posted by UNAD as an Industrial Trainee, he was chosen to be among the special team of trained Engineers who visited the Delta State Government House in 2007, to carry out thorough preventive and corrective maintenance on 20 units out of the over 100 units of KIA RIO cars acquired by the delta state government under the leadership of His Excellency, Emmanuel Uduaghan. Due to his excellent performance and expertise at KIA Motors during his industrial training, he was offered a job opportunity as a Maintenance Engineer upon graduation with his Bachelor’s Degree.
Upon accepting the job offer from KIA Motors, he became responsible for scheduled checkups and preventive maintenance of vehicles according to the manufacturer’s recommended service intervals which also depends largely on the vehicle mileage.
At KIA Motors, he was actively involved in the preventive maintenance of KIA automobile models such as RIO, Sportage, Sorento, Cerato, Picanto, and Carens, to mention but a few, by replacing overdue or bad air filters, changing of oil filters from the sump, replacing bad engine oil with new ones and corrective maintenance where necessary. He also performed several ICE (Internal Combustion Engine), gearbox and suspension system overhauls of the above-mentioned KIA automobile models.
He was also able to make vast use of vehicle diagnostic checker tool to detect various vehicle faults due to his expertise with the tool. He was later appointed the role of a supervisor to supervise and approve the maintenance work done by junior auto-technicians to ensure that maintenance is done properly according to requirement to increase output efficiency.
During his Bachelor’s Degree study period, he designed and fabricated a fluidized bed dryer with which he used to investigate on the “Effect of Air-flow Rate on Fluidized bed drying of Cassava Particulate “, where he was focused on determining the effect of upward moving pressurized warm air entering the bed dryer vessel through holes in a distributor plate on wet cassava particulate. During the fluidization process, his fluidized bed dryer was able to convert cassava particulates from a static-solid state to a dynamic fluid-like state, which allows for total extraction of the 62-65% moisture level contained in fresh cassava particulates. This was achieved by periodically increasing the air-flow rate which enhanced the heat and mass transfer, thereby leading to faster drying rate. His fluidized bed dryer machine allows for a more hygienic and efficient moisture removal, which eliminates uneven drying of the cassava particulates, hence impacting positively on the product quality.
This fluidized bed drying method has now been wildly adopted locally for the production of cassava flakes, a staple food in Nigeria, locally known as “garri” in the South Western part of the country, and feedbacks from these local producers in Ekiti State of Nigeria shows that the fluidized bed dryer has improved “garri” production hygiene level and also increased production output by 60%. Annually, this fluidized bed drying process is expected to save production cost to a tune of over $15,000.
At Jinzhou Dongxing Packaging Machinery Co., Ltd. in China, where he was posted as a research Engineer by Liaoning University of Technology during his M.Eng. research period, he worked with a team of Engineers to design a DXDK900 600W pharmaceutical packaging machinery which has the capacity to package and seal up to 40 packs of pharmaceutical products in 60 minutes. The optimized DXDK900 was faster and more efficient than its predecessor, DXDK800, and is now locally adopted resulting in 7% energy saving and also increased output by 10%.
At Jinzhou Halla Electrical Equipment Co. Ltd., where he worked as an Alternator Design Engineer, he optimized a 50A alternator to 60A alternator, by improving the rotor coil parameters from Ø0.85mm/315T to Ø1.0mm/310T and the stator coil parameters from Ø1.0mm/8T/2a to Ø1.5mm/8T/2a, and enhancing its mono function regulator to a multifunction regulator.
This optimization increased the alternator efficiency level from 60% to 65%, which reduced the engine load thereby leading to better performance, improved the fuel economy due to more efficient power generation without compromising performance, and ensures a longer battery life thereby enhancing the overall electrical system performance of the vehicle, which also contribute to overall durability.
He later designed a 170A/14V alternator which uses an active bridge rectification (ABR) and a 96 slots stator to achieve an efficiency level of 78% and a CO2 emission reduction of 2.4g CO2/ km from passenger cars. He then spearheaded the successful application process of this 170A/14V alternator with the EU for approve of the alternator as an efficient alternator pursuant to Article 12 of Regulation (EC) No 443/2009 and the Implementing Regulation (EU) No 725/2011.
He later carried out a design improvement of shipping container spray painting production line.
The improvement was very significant as it was able to drastically reduce paint waste during spray painting by 50%, since the automatic spraying guns ensures consistency and uniformity of spray painting thereby reducing paint waste.
Since the design improvement incorporates a Flip-Frame mechanism, which increased the automation of the spray-painting production line, human activities has been greatly reduced which also helps to save labor cost on the production line.
He designed a 15W/12V Wireless Device Charger (WDC) which uses Qi 1.2 (a Wireless Power Consortium standard) Baseline Power Profile (BPP) and Extended Power Profile (EPP) protocol technology to charge wireless charging enabled devices such as mobile phones, ear pods and smart watches, among others. The WDC makes charging convenient thereby eliminating the need for tangled charging cables and also simplifies the charging process by simply putting your device on the WDC charging pad to charge.
This WDC ensure durable charging interface by eliminates the risk of over stressing of the wireless device charging port, which is a major cause of phone damages.
Based on Qi 1.3 BPP/EPP protocol technology, he later designed an active cooling 15W WDC, equipped with a 5.0V D.C fan, which makes wireless charging of devices more convenient as the D.C fan aides cooling of the device during charging to avoid the device from entering its temperature protection state.
Entering its temperature protection state invariable means the wireless charging rate of the device will be lowered or inhibited. For example, iPhone14pro will reach a State of Charge (SOC) of 40% at a phone back-surface temperature of 46.7oC after charging for 60 minutes on his passive cooling WDC but will reach an SOC of 65% at a phone back-surface temperature of 39°C with his active cooling WDC at the same charging period of 60 minutes. Hence, the active cooling WDC has been able to save energy by increasing the SOC by 19.7% and reducing the temperature by 16.5%. With this 15W active cooling WDC, wireless charging of devices will hardly encounter overheating issues during normal or fast charging state.
He is also a certified member of Nigerian Society of Engineers (NSE), Council for Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN), and Liaoning Intermediate Professional Certificate of Specialty and Technology, China. He also holds ISO 26262 Functional Safety (FuSa) certification (2020), and also Microsoft Paradigm Initiative certification in 2011. He also have good knowledge of APQP, ASPICE 4.0, and IATF 16949.
Engr. Sunday is competent in the use of CAD software such as AUTO-CAD, CATIA, Siemens NX, SolidWorks, and Pro-Engineer for 2D/3D drawings. He is also very skillful in the use of CAE software such as ANSYS Fluent for simulating fluid flow, heat and mass transfer. Aside from his skillful use of CAD and CAE, he is also proficient in the use of CAM software with deep knowledge in the use of MasterCAM for programming CNC machines.
Recently, Engineer Sunday has shown great interest in; Aerospace and Automotive Engineering, Advanced Auto dynamics, Advanced Thermodynamics, Computational Fluid Dynamics, Engineering Design and Fluid Mechanic, Engineering System Automation, Experimental Analysis, Fault Detection, Finite-Element Analysis of Engineering Parts, Functional Safety Analysis of Engineering systems according to ISO 26262, HVAC, Mechanics of Machines, Vehicle Modeling and Optimization, Mechatronics, Manufacturing and Fabrication Processes, Robotics, and Mechanics of Machines.
With the remarkable impact made by Engineer Sunday Okorie in his field and especially during his work experience period with DANA Motors (KIA Motors), GSS Gidan Waya, Jinzhou Dongxing Packing Machinery Co., Ltd., Jinzhou Halla Electrical Equipment Co., Ltd., and Luxshare Precision Industry Co., Ltd., and he is ever ready to take up new challenges in his field.
