Off-Grid, Non-Electric Refrigeration

A recent post at the T’a’grarial blog shows a TED talk video of Adam Grosser describing a new, improved version of a product from 1928 providing 24 hours of safe non-electric refrigeration from a device the size of a thermos using just one hour of cooking heat available anywhere in the world.

3 Responses to “Off-Grid, Non-Electric Refrigeration”

  1. Richard Smith Says:

    What a wonderful teaser! I look forward to more information.

    If it is as good as it sounds, I’d contribute to a campaign to generate testimonial, hard data , and innovations. We need references to the Stanford and the UK groups that participated, and other relevant data.

    Could someone post these reverences and any available contrary views?

  2. Nate Says:

    Eep, $25? Hardly “something everyone can have.” It’s also not something people in the developing world can make for themselves, so they’re still dependent on the charity of other nations.

    Aside from that, cooking fires are hardly free – that fuel comes from miles away, carried by women at great risk and labor, and gained by deforestation. Diseases caused by smoke inhalation from heating and cooking fires are also a major problem, especially for young children. I’d be curious if a solar-heated model would be possible. Also I wonder what kind of insulation the container uses. Could the re-heat interval be lengthened by super-insulating it? Is it already super-insulated?

    Sorry if I come across as a spoil-sport, but I feel that the technologies need to be incredibly inexpensive and capable of being made for the poor by themselves. Things like SODIS, CooKits, composting toilets, etc.

  3. PermaKent Says:

    You probably came in from a page describing the zeer “pot in pot” method of keeping food fresh. I also posted about that a while back:

    High-tech products do have problems of cost and local technical support, but if they’re durable enough might still be a good solution in remote regions. Here’s a solar absorption house cooling system from a company based in Spain (description is in English): http://www.rotartica.com/pub/ingl/index.html

    The small absorption chemical thermos-sized cooler should work with cheap solar sources used to replace cooking fires, as seen here: http://permakent.com/2008/07/25/solar-cooking-for-the-rest-of-us/ Notice I do point out the deforestation/health issues of cooking fires in that post.

Leave a Reply

