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Michigan State Solar Refrigerator Team

Our Michigan State University student design team recently returned from Guatemala where they demonstrated the ATC/MSU design of a solar vaccine refrigerator. (The MSU students deserve all the credit here)

This remarkable invention works. Period.  Put it in the sun and it will keep vaccines very cold.  With minor modifications it will freeze water solid and keep it that way, even in hot climates, just as long as the sun shines.  If the sun doesn’t shine when you want to keep vaccines cold you can make a small wood fire to power the freezer.  Moreover it can be built for about $400.00, about a third the cost of what NGOs are spending now in remote regions of Africa.

Background:

Over half of all vaccines spoil due to temperature before they reach the people who so desperately need them in rural Africa and parts of Asia.  We met up with a representative of the World Health Organization to discuss this problem after which we, ATC, came up with a design problem:  To design a low cost refrigerator that can keep vaccines cold without the use of fossil fuels or electricity in rural parts of Africa.  Moreover the design should operate without human intervention, it should be robust and it must be cheap.  While this sounds impossible, we challenged a group of Michigan State University Engineering Students to design just such a refrigerator.  The students were more than up to the challenge, they reveled in the near impossibility of it.  Imagine being charged with the task “just make a box that freezes when you put it in the sun” because this is the essence of what we asked them to do.

From the MSU Student Presentation:

Many of the vaccines used to control diseases require cold temperatures for preservation. Without a reliable power infrastructure, developing countries often lack the resources to keep these vaccines cool for an extended time period, hampering the ability to adequately protect citizens. It is estimated that 50 percent of vaccines in rural areas are wasted due to spoilage.

The Appropriate Technology Collaborative Student Design Team – Michigan State,  was charged with the task of developing a refrigerator to solve this problem. Design specifications called for an adsorption refrigerator capable of maintaining a temperature between 2°C and 8°C that utilizes passive solar energy and can be built in developing countries. As the third team of a three-semester project, the students were given the tasks to create a design that was easily and affordably constructed and to build two prototypes.

During a 13-day trip to Guatemala, the team built the refrigerator (actual build time was less than one week!)  with locally-available materials and tested it in a real-world scenario. The team’s final product is a clear and comprehensive set of instructions for building the device distributed freely online.

…The Appropriate Technology Design Collaborative Student Design Team – Michigan State University

MSU Solar Refrigerator CAD Model

A special shout out to AIDG, The Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group who hosted our work in Guatemala, and to the intrepid Prof. Craig Somerton, without whom this project wouldn’t have been possible.

A copy of the design drawings for the Solar Refrigerator is available:  Solar Vaccine Refrigerator

Photo: Kevin McPhail, Muhammed Aslam, Eric Tingwall, Brent Rowland, Ryan McPhee

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: (12.08.07)

Life Saving Vaccine Refrigerator Wins Design Competition

East Lansing, MI – Engineering students at Michigan State University teamed up with The Appropriate Technology Collaborative to create a simple, inexpensive solar powered refrigerator. The refrigerator is designed to be built and used in very remote parts of the world where half of all vaccines spoil before they can be used. The student team of Andy Coleman, Alan Katz, Lindsay Kredo and Jessica Theis created the life saving technology, from first sketch to final prototype in just one semester.

Vaccines must be kept cold to maintain their potency. Vaccinations in rural areas depend on time limited technologies such as ice, dry ice, and cold storage boxes. As a result, 50% of rural vaccines are wasted through spoilage due to lack of cooling. Public health suffers as a quarter of all children born every year–34 million infants–are not protected against diseases for which there are inexpensive vaccines and an estimated 2.1 million people around the world die every year of diseases preventable by common vaccines. (WHO 2005)

The goal of this joint design project was to design and fabricate an inexpensive appropriate technology freezing chamber that can be made primarily from locally available resources in rural Africa and Asia. The purpose of this design is to produce ice so that vaccines can be maintained at the proper temperature of between 2ºC and 8ºC. This design should not rely on grid connected power. All possible technologies were considered, however simpler technologies have the advantage in ease of construction and for maintenance.

The Appropriate Technology Collaborative + MSU team won first place for the Edison Award which is judged to be the single most outstanding project. Executive Director John Barrie noted “We are very pleased to have had this chance to work with such a bright and energetic group of students, but the real winners are the children who will now get vaccines.”

The Appropriate Technology Collaborative (ATC) is a 501 (c)(3) not-for-profit organization whose purpose is “To design, develop, demonstrate and distribute appropriate technological solutions for meeting the basic human needs of low income people in the developing world. ATC works in collaboration with our clients to create technologies that are culturally sensitive, environmentally responsible and locally repairable in order to improve the quality of life, enhance safety, and reduce adverse impacts on their environment.”

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Photo Credit – Parabolic Trough – MIT Technology Review

Links:

MSU Design Day Brochure

More Photos

John Barrie

Executive Director

The Appropriate Technology Collaborative
321 South Main Street, Suite 202
Ann Arbor, MI 48104
www.apptechdesign.org
Contact John Barrie