Aug 29 2008
Solar icemaker gets sun to making ice
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The solar icemaker is an eco-friendly device, which has zero carbon footprint. And some more it doesn’t need electricity to keep the ice cool, which is super handy for places like a developing country or disaster zone where electricity is unreachable.
The solar-powered ice maker uses a refrigerant liquid which evaporates when exposed to the sun. The vapor then travels through pipes that come into contact with an absorbent material which cools when the sun goes down. When this absorbent material reaches the 104°F, the refrigerant turns back into a liquid, which its temperature then drops below the freezing point due to pressure difference. When some water is added to the exterior of the evaporator, then ice will form.
The solar ice maker needs no electricity, uses only solar energy to produce ice and it has no moving parts. It’s capable of making 14 pounds of ice per day, which is more than enough for average Joe during their hot summer’s barbecue session.
The device is definitely a super handy one for those remote areas which are always exposed to the hot sun, and where those people desperately want some ice to cook themselves down. Currently, it’s still a prototype of the engineering students. Hope they could get it ready by next summer.
via [dvice]
