Engineering Team Member
My current main project. A group of my fellow students and I have identified a need for ultra low temperature freezers for storage of COVID-19 vaccines. Currently, many remote communities do not have easy access to a vaccine distribution site; Most vaccines are being distributed to major population centers, leaving residents of more isolated areas with no easy access to vaccines. What smaller communities lack is the ability to store the vaccines at the required temperatures. The Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine requires the vials be kept at -60 to -80 Celsius, and most everyday doctor’s offices do not have freezers capable of storage in this range.
Thus, my team and I developed a vision to not only deliver vaccines to remote communities, but also allow them the long term storage they would need as well. We are targeting a compact, portable freezer that can be easily transported from a population center to a smaller community. Once delivered to the community, and vaccines are distributed, the freezer can then be returned to the original distribution center. The freezer is then restocked and sent to another community.
We have created a preliminary design for a cascade refrigeration cycle capable of meeting our constraints. Our next step is to model, simulate, and optimize the system to ensure the best possible solution, and deliver the best possible design to our stakeholders.