CoolVeg
CoolVeg is a nonprofit organization focused on technologies that utilize evaporative cooling for the preservation of fruits and vegetables in hot and dry climates. These underutilized technologies improve fruit and vegetable shelf-life, increasing access to these nutritious foods, reducing food loss, and saving community members precious time and money.
CoolVeg works in partnership with businesses, research institutions, NGOs, and government agencies to commercialize these technologies.
Solutions
The forced-air evaporative cooling chamber uses the materials used in commercially available evaporative coolers to cool fruits and vegetables inside a 20’ or 40’ shipping container. The key innovation that makes this solution effective is the airflow pathways, the configuration of the insulation, and the arrangement of the crates to optimize the cooling rate and the system’s efficiency. The system can be deployed in off-grid settings at less than half the cost of a refrigerated cold room.