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Ice Owls

Off-Grid Ice Maker

 

Member profile details

Membership level
2011-2012 Team
Project Thumbnail Image
Team Name
Ice Owls
Project Title
Off-Grid Ice Maker
Design Challenge
The World Health Organization maintains that over 50% of vaccines delivered to developing nations are wasted due to lack of refrigeration that stems from the low availability of electricity in these regions. These wasted vaccines result in millions of lives lost to vaccine preventable diseases annually. Our team will tackle the challenge of designing and building an off-grid ice maker that can be used in these regions to preserve vaccines and save some of these lives.
Design Summary
Our solution to the problem of off-grid ice generation will utilize the process of evaporative cooling to freeze water into ice. We will achieve this with a vacuum powered multi-chambered system that takes advantage of the heat transfer properties of water adsorption reactions. Due to the highle variable nature of these thermodynamic processes, our approach to implementing these components will be to design and build multiple prototypes and conduct a wide range of tests in order to lock down design parameters of our system. The main important criteria to meet for a solution will be that our device is reliable, easy to operate, and inexpensive. Also, it must obviously work without the need for electricity. We aim to solve the issue of off-grid operation by powering our device with human mechanical energy as well as solar heat energy. We are currently in the testing phase of our initial prototype and hope to achieve our first batch of ice production soon.

Last updated 12/2/2011
Department(s)
  • Mechanical Engineering
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Faculty Advisor 1 - Name
Doug Schuler
 

Team Members

Award(s) and Recognition
3rd Annual Rice Alliance Undergraduate Elevator Pitch Competition: 1st Place
Winner

Contact us

Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen
Rice University

6100 Main Street MS 390 | Houston, Texas | 77005

Phone: 713.348.OEDK

Email: oedk@rice.edu

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