Keeping food and drinks chilled is straightforward enough when you have a continuous power supply, but not everyone has that luxury. Relying on an ice-based approach to keep things cool around the clock with just six hours of plug-in time, Coolfinity’s IceVolt 300 is a fridge designed for shop owners in tropical areas whose goods often go to waste due to power outages.
According to Coolfinity, more than 70 countries around the world endure regular power outages, and many of them are in tropical or subtropical zones. When business owners in these areas can't keep their goods properly cooled, it often leads to spoilage and vast amounts of wastage.
The IceVolt 300 fridge is designed to lessen their reliance on the grid by freezing water and using it as a thermal sink, gently releasing cold energy as needed to keep the container at the desired temperature when the power supply is cut.
While this concept isn't new, Coolfinity says it is the first to apply the technique to large commercial coolers. It has designed the IceVolt 300 fridge in such a way that it is able to simply freeze water when power is available. It says that with six hours of power each day, the Coolfinity fridge can run 24/7. And if the power is cut, the ice melts slowly enough to hold the temperature of refrigerator to below 6° C (42° F) for up to 48 hours.
"This way we have indeed decoupled cooling ability from energy availability by offering a fridge that keeps products cold and is also able to cool down warm products even when there is no power," the company says.
Coolfinity is launching the IceVolt 300 fridge internationally at CES in Las Vegas this week, where it has also picked up an innovation award for its efforts.
Source: Coolfinity
Update (Jan. 10, 2020): This article originally stated that the IceVolt 300 made use of a eutectic solution, which is a mixture that has a lower melting point than those of its constituent parts. We've confirmed with the company that it only uses water and have changed the text accordingly. Our apologies for the error and thanks to the readers who brought it to our attention.
But going to guess the price premium as well as extra energy required to refreeze the water-based heat sink would be far greater than spending the money on more flexible battery capacity and running a reasonably priced standard energy efficient fridge.
@BlueOak, it's true that just a battery capacity is more flexible, however the most energy efficient way to store cold (thermal) energy is with water. Also this results in using a "clean battery" of just water, instead of using a battery with scarce metals.
@McDesign, our fridge's technology resulted in a quite energy efficient solution as well. While there are indeed storage inefficiencies, the fact that we can run the fridge's compressor in one go actually results in an energy efficient solution as well (compared to most commercial B2B fridges of the same size). However, I must admit that a fridge purely optimised for energy efficiency would probably not use our technology.
@Worzel, exactly! We also often use the example of the ice packs, as this is basically what we have integrated, but then on a much larger scale and more high tech. While using regular ice packs, the temperature inside a cool box is very cold at first and at a certain moment way too warm. It doesn't provide strict temperature control... However, because we separate the "ice pack" compartment from the compartment with the products (food, drinks or medication) and use active air cooling, we can always provide the exact desired cooling temperature for those products. Regular ice packs cannot beat that ;)
@ljaques, please read the article. I'm disappointed that you think this is a gimmick. Let me explain. Every year 150 million vaccines are lost due to bad cooling. Electric power outages are the main reason for this. If reliable cooling would have been available, the potency of these medical supplies wouldn't be lost and many many human lives wouldn't be lost. So reliable cooling improves and saves people's lives and that is the reason our company exists. An actual gimmick would be the alarm clock with integrated coffee machine, also presented at CES last week ;)
@Nobody, during power outages our fridge can still be used and many (dozens) of door openings are no problem, as it is specifically tested for that (because our solution regards a commercial B2B solution).
@Worzel & Nobody, we do not prefer to stimulate the use of generators due to their noise, smell and CO2 emissions. Also for our markets generator backup power is not always preferred because of those reasons. Lastly our sales so far prove that we can be competitive with generators ;)