Julia Römer's refrigerators produce cold from heat. Many medicines - from asthma sprays to insulin to vaccines - must be cooled until moments before they're used. But in large parts of the world, electricity is not readily available. So Römer, a technical-chemistry engineer, asked herself: What if you built a refrigerator that doesn't use electricity? The answer was the catalyst for the startup, Coolar.
In a conventional refrigerator, low temperatures are caused by the evaporation of a coolant. In Römer's solar-powered version, the evaporating liquid is water. Her system uses silica gel to attract water after evaporation and create a cycle: a solar panel generates heat that causes the gel to dry, then the water evaporates and is returned to circulation. The solar chiller needs almost no maintenance and is easy to dispose of since it doesn't contain any polluting substances.
Coolar has four employees working on a prototype. "We have to move to a new workshop soon. The hobby phase is almost over," says Römer, who funded the development with the £40,000 that Coolar won in a startup competition in 2016. Now the team is on the road, looking for investors and suitable pilot projects in countries such as Kenya. Depending on its size, one refrigerator can chill enough vaccines for up to 4,000 people. That's a pretty cool reason for going off-grid.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
