In February, Coolar team members Arno and Bernhard visited health facilities in Turkana, Northern Kenya, using Coolar miniature’s demonstrator to show-case our technology with heat instead of electricity!
It was the perfect opportunity to get feedback from the health workers that will use the Coolar refrigerator in the future. The field study was a great success as our miniature demonstrator was well received and questionnaire-based interviews with health centre staff demonstrated the relevance of our technology. 1.2 billion people live without electricity and therefore also have no access to cooling. Coolar offers a most sustainable solution to cool vaccines and medicines in regions with no access to electricity where the general need for health care and especially lifesaving medicines and vaccines that need stable cooling is critical.
The Coolar system’s key advantage is that it requires no electricity. In addition to that it operates without causing any CO2 or harmful refrigerant emissions. It has no significant running costs as it runs on solar heat, which is an abundant and essentially free energy resource in the target regions. Furthermore it works without without moving parts like compressors in conventional refrigerators that put wear on the system and therefore limit the refrigerator’s durability. Especially useful in the case of cooling vaccines is that Coolar’s system comes with no freezing-risk, as conventional solutions often damage vaccines due to accidental freezing.
The concept being validated by the field study, the Coolar team is determined to complete the last steps of the product development and put Coolar’s system on the market!
Coolar Mini-Demonstrator inspected by staff at a health facility in Turkana, Kenya; Feb. 2017.
The feedback from Kenya on our miniature demonstrator was already extremely useful and Coolar is currently running further tests on the new 180 litres prototype with the Leibniz Institute for Agricultural Engineering and Bioeconomy (ATB) in Potsdam as an independent scientific partner. With ATB, operating conditions under which Coolar’s system will be used are being simulated. This will help the team to foucs product development on the actual needs in the market and make a product fit for its use in remote regions with warm climates.
