Affordable & Scalable: Evaporative Cooling Can Fight Food Loss – Time for Communities & the Development Sector to Embrace It

Adding water to an evaporative cooling device.
Adding water to an evaporative cooling device.
Engineering for Change

Blog post as posted on Engineering for Change website

 

Excerpt

"Along with temperature reduction, evaporative cooling devices provide protection from animals and insects, and increased humidity inside the storage chamber. These benefits significantly improve the shelf-life of common fruits and vegetables, leading to reduced spoilage (money saved), increase access to nutritious food (improved health), and less needed to frequently purchase food (time saved). The devices are easy to make using affordable, locally available materials, like clay pots, bricks, sand, charcoal, wood, dry grass, gunny or burlap sack, and twine. And because they don’t require electricity, they are an environmentally sound refrigeration solution that’s perfect for areas where access to electricity is limited."

Full blog post as posted on Engineering for Change website


Contact

Eric Verploegen, MIT D-Lab Research Engineer