Sector: healthcare
Proposal: Design and implementation of an effective solar direct drive vaccine refrigeration system.
Summary:
The past two years have been full of suffering and agony for people throughout the world.
Covid-19 has shown us just how fragile our healthcare sectors are and how an infinitesimally small virus can clog up the most prosperous of global economies in human history in a matter of months. But nowhere has the effects of this global pandemic hit harder than in lower income households and countries with poor healthcare infrastructure and limited resources. Especially people under the poverty line living in off-grid regions.
Bangladesh being a country with limited resources has had a huge humanitarian crisis in the recent years in the form of the Rohingya Refugee Crisis and will have to combat these growing COVID-19 cases while finding viable and resource efficient ways of helping these people who’ve been dispersed from their homes living in off-grid locations.
A health worker from an aid organization walks wearing a hazmat suit at the Kutupalong Rohingya refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh
Our solution to combating the Cool Chain Crisis is to create a more efficient cool chain system for the transportation of the vaccines with the help of Solar Direct Drive Technology using which we will harness the power of the sun and use that energy to freeze water or shift phase change to form ice banks to refrigerate the vaccines at night and cloudy days.
We are developing a smart vaccine refrigeration and storage system which harnesses the power of the sun to create ice banks that later help keep the vaccines at an optimum temperature throughout the night and cloudy days.
We accomplish this phenomenon by using solar direct drive technology which replaces the need for using traditional batteries.
The open exterior for the refrigerator shows the opening of the ice bank chamber on the right and the vaccine chamber in blue on the left.
Key design highlights:
We have used two separate chambers in our design, using a partition between the vaccine chamber and the ice bank chamber.
The design helps us to achieve the following things:
1. Two separate chambers allow for a separation between the ice layer and the vaccines providing more room to store the vaccines.
2. Each chamber can be accessed individually which stops excess heat and gases to leave the vaccine chamber.
3. The separate chambers provide better thermal insulation for both the vaccines and the ice banks.
4. It is easier to control the temperature of the vaccine chamber if the ice bank is kept apart.
5. The use of batteries has been omitted in our design which makes it more environmentally sound and allows us to cut down on cost.
Inshallah this will help