College Student Invents Affordable Solar-Powered Fridge
January 17, 2009 · Print This Article
The refrigerator made by British college student Emily Cummins isn’t really new – the idea has been around for ages, but for some reason, it hasn’t really been applied on a wide scale. Now that people are rethinking the design of everyday items in order to up their energy efficiency and sustainability, however, ideas like Emily’s are becoming more popular.
Emily’s solar-powered fridge can be made from household materials, making it ideal for use in the third world. The 21-year-old came up with the idea while working on a school project in her grandfather’s potting shed.
From The Daily Mail:
Her ’sustainable’ fridge works through evaporation and can be used to keep perishable goods such as milk and meat cool for days.
Without using any power, temperatures stay at around 6c.
The fridge comprises two cylinders - one inside the other. The inner cylinder is made from metal but the outer cylinder can be made from anything to hand, including wood and plastic.
Miss Cummins, from Keighley, West Yorkshire, said: ‘A fridge is something that people can’t seem to live without.
‘I wanted to keep it really simple and so I set about researching how we cooled things years ago. The simplest method of cooling something could be seen when you look at how we cool biologically - through sweating or evaporation.
‘That idea led me to the design and the fridge was born.’
Cummins, who has won awards for a toothpase squeezer for arthritis sufferers and for a water-carrying device for Third World use, also hopes to patent a more sophisticated portable version to transport medical supplies around hot countries.
She has spent five months in Africa perfecting and demonstrating her refrigerator, recently returning to the UK to start a business management course at Leeds University. She had hoped to take engineering courses but was denied due to lack of proper qualifications, as supporters around the world call for university officials to consider her real-world experience.
What makes Emily’s invention special is that she has taken this idea and applied it to a real need in the world, finding a niche for it so it can be used for the greater good. I’m no engineer but I have to wonder why we can’t apply similar technology to full-size refrigerators at home – modern-day fridges are such a waste of energy, especially in the winter.
Link [The Daily Mail] via [CleanTechnica]
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Go Emily! This is the type of inventions that going to make renewable energy more do-able. So much focus is on the most expensive and sexiest alternative energy systems (i.e. solar electric panels) but so little on easy, inexpensive solutions.
This particular technology may not be appropriate for the mainstream consumer that tends to be very particular and demanding. I believe there is a limitation in how many degrees colder (beyond ambient temperature) you can get from evaporative cooling. So if you want your food in the fridge to always be at 40F no matter what’s going on outside this won’t be a solution for you.