SBIR Phase I: Hydrologic Open Cooling System (HOCS) for low-energy refrigeration

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The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is the development of a technology enabling low-energy, resilient cooling that is capable of mitigating the environmental impacts and high costs of conventional refrigeration. There is a critical need for sustainable cooling solutions that provide an alternative to hydrofluorocarbon-based refrigerants that rely on carbon dioxide (CO2)-emitting systems. This project seeks to develop a Hydrologic Open Cooling System (HOCS) that can maintain cooling chambers at 1.5-5°C utilizing 10% or less of the electrical power of conventional systems. This project unlocks environmental heat as an energy reservoir and offsets significant energy costs of conventional cooling systems. The technology can support highly efficient refrigeration at a fraction of the operational cost and electrical demand of traditional systems. Adoption of this cooling technology by small- to mid-size supermarkets would enable significant cost savings for electricity. On a broader scale, widespread implementation of this innovation across a variety of refrigeration applications would reduce greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption, meeting the need for sustainable technologies to support food and energy security while upholding climate goals.This SBIR Phase I project develops a renewable, closed container cooling system incorporating a rechargeable vacuum insulation and a novel two-stage heat pump. This project involves 1) developing a rechargeable vacuum insulation technology that does not use vacuum pumps; 2) creating a modified dewar connected to a fully renewable cooling system enabling cooled inner chambers; and 3) evaluating the ability to use environmental heat to restore the solutions that power the cooling system allowing their reuse. The novel heat pump technology is based on two asynchronous stages: the first utilizes concentration gradients as a driving mechanism enabling thermal transfer, while the second uses environmental heat to re-concentrate saline solutions after dilution during stage one. Together, these two stages enable cooling of a closed container. The project will examine system configurations able to generate large thermal gradients, enabling maintenance of 1.5-5°C temperatures within the dewar. Advantages of this system include 1) the system’s ability to cool continues in the absence of electricity making it resilient to power outages from itinerant weather, wildfires, and earthquakes; 2) lossless storage of cooling capacity; and 3) significantly reducing the greenhouse gas footprint compared to conventional refrigeration.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.