Once in a while we run across real “world-changing” technology. This is the real thing: a refrigeration system that uses solar power – and doesn’t require toxic batteries.
As you’ll hear in our interview with one of the project’s main actors, Janos Mate of Vancouver (click the title above to listen to this 9 minute interview) – the idea for solar chill arose out of a desperate need to deliver life-saving vaccines to less developed countries. It’s fine for the Bill Gates foundation to donate hundreds of millions for vaccines, but that won’t work without a way to get the vaccines to the outlying areas where hundreds of millions of people suffer from easily preventable diseases.
The problem: vaccines have to be kept cool – all the time! A short period of heating kills off the living processes within the vaccine. The process of keeping a cool temperature all the way from production to delivery in a Third World country is called “the cold chain.” But how do we get vaccines to rural India, Indonesia, or Africa, where there is no electricity, and no reliable refrigeration?
Even battery power won’t work. Janos tells me that batteries don’t work as well in the tropical heat. They deteriorate. Plus they are expensive, and so tend to get stolen. Not to mention the toxic heavy metals in batteries – that will be thrown into the environment with no disposal program.
What if we could store the Sun’s power in something natural like…. ice! That is exactly what the Solar Chill vaccine cooler does. It uses solar power to run a heat pump to make ice. Even if the Sun doesn’t shine for almost a week, the super insulation around the vaccine cooler will maintain the ice, and the required temperature. Vaccines can be delivered to those who need it.
The technology has already been successfully tested in Senegal, Indonesia and Cuba. Now it is waiting for approval by the World Health Organization, before going into production, initially by some Danish companies. The tech itself is being donated into the public domain. Wonderful.
BUT WAIT….THIS IS MUCH BIGGER
The Solar Chill consortium, which includes Greenpeace International, UNICEF, WHO, and other companies and organizations – has built a bigger model which operates as a solar power refrigerator. This tech could be used anywhere there is sunshine but no electricity, to help keep the world’s food supply safer. Try it in a remote cabin, anywhere, or on a boat or isolated island.
Eventually, we could use this solar fridge tech ANYWHERE, including in your home.
The added bonus: this design doesn’t use the most toxic plastic, or gases that add to global warming. That’s a big deal, because all our present refrigerators were taken off their diet of CFC’s – the ozone killers – but now run on HFC’s – which are potent global warming gases. We need to convert our fridges to climate friendly models. Otherwise, the hotter it gets, the more HFC’s we use, adding to the heat – you get the picture.
Please take ten minutes of your time to download or listen to the interview with Janos Mate. I think this technology, which will be free to all without a big corporation patent, can help save the world, and a lot of lives.
Find out more at www.solarchill.org
And keep tuned to Radio Ecoshock, the Net’s only full time all environment radio station – free. Go to www.ecoshock.org.