Solar Refrigeration for Storage of Food Products

This proposal describes a novel method for the refrigeration and storage of food products that does not use electricity and is cleaner for the environment than any method currently in use. Our concept addresses many important economic and social development issues facing rural America such as access to good quality and safe food, food-borne illnesses, pollution, lack of adequate infrastructure to name a few. Proper food storage helps maintain food quality by retaining flavor, color, texture and nutrients, while reducing the chance of contracting a food-borne illness. In many rural areas, both in the US and worldwide, the availability of fresh food is limited by lack of refrigerated warehousing facilities and no easy access to electricity to power such facilities.Responding to these challenges, Magnetic Development Inc. proposes a novel and advanced cooling/refrigeration technology that doesn & #39;t require electricity and completely eliminates the greenhouse gases emission and ozone depletion effect. It can be quickly developed for commercial cold storage of many food products, including fruits and vegetables, eggs, milk and diary products, baked products, and also medicines and pharmaceutical products in field conditions. We explore here an intriguing concept - capturing the heat from the sun to produce cooling. Indeed, the innovation uses free or inexpensive heat, either solar or waste, as the main source of energy instead of electricity. The proposed system uses our previously developed technology platform, which is a patented ejector device for non-mechanical compression. We are pressurizing the liquefied refrigerant using a simple pump, adding solar heat to evaporate it and finally re-compressing the refrigerant in an ejector without any mechanical energy. The system is well suited for natural and synthetic refrigerants, instead of highly destructive Freons. Our proposal responds to the referenced topic by developing technologies and services that protect the ecosystem, conserve energy and develop alternative energy sources (in this case solar).Additionally our solar-based ejector system for cooling should be part of emergency preparedness planning in many farms and communities: even small amount of refrigeration can be life saving.The adaptation of this technology to refrigerated food storage requires resolving many challenging technical problems that were never addressed before. Consequently, the main objective of Phase I will be to demonstrate that practical, commercially significant cooling can be achieved that is cost-competitive with existing refrigeration systems. We expect that this development will eventually emerge in Phase III as an attractive, energy saving product with potential worldwide application. As we & #39;ve shown in the proposal, only limited use of this technology (storage of only one crop - strawberries in USA) would yield savings of over 50,000 MWhr of electrical power per year and eliminating emission of 35 Thousand Tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. If this project is successful then many other attractive applications for this technology can be envisioned. For example, solar A/C for buildings, automobile A/C powered by the engine exhaust, cooling data centers by utilizing the heat generated by computers, mobile solar-powered cool storage for medicines. It has a potential for the DoA and DoD, for cooling field hospitals, command centers and/or data centers, to provide refrigeration and A/C in Third World countries and in remote areas where electricity is unavailable.It is expected that the new cooling approach will have a great impact on rural America by contributing to clean environment, producing jobs, promoting sustainable living, renewable energies, helping to provide safe food. Bringing the free refrigeration will stimulate the communities to use more renewable energies, motivate local population to study and invest into the idea of sustainable development and this will eventually resu