For Hamid, who lives in a small village in Morocco, a fully-functioning fridge would mean the world. At least, he would not have to take the daily 6-hour long trip to the local souk (as the marketplace is called in North Africa) to buy fresh products.
A potential solution to Hamid’s problem comes from Boston-based startup Evaptainers, almost 3,500 miles away from Africa. At Evaptainers, engineers are developing a portable fridge that doesn’t need electricity.
A potential solution to Hamid’s problem comes from Boston-based startup Evaptainers, almost 3,500 miles away from Africa. At Evaptainers, engineers are developing a portable fridge that doesn’t need electricity.
The story of the company, which is now headquartered at MassChallenge as an “alumni in residence,” starts at a class of the MIT Development Lab. The first day, the professor asked for ideas that “would change the life of one billion people.”
Quang Truong, at that time a master’s student at Tufts University who had a chance to cross-register into the class, wanted to be up to the task. Thanks to his background in agribusiness, he was aware of an electricity-free technique to produce cold by leveraging the evaporation of molecules. All he needed at that time was a group of engineers to perfect an efficient device based on this principle. And there’s no shortage of engineers at MIT.
Fast-forwarding, Truong got accepted in the 2014 MassChallenge class and started working with Spencer Taylor, a local entrepreneur who Truong met thanks to Taylor’s wife. Currently, Taylor is the CEO and Truong the COO of the company.
Evaptainers, which has a provisional patent on the current version of the fridge, call the portable fridge “EV-8.”
https://www.americaninno.com/boston/these-masschallenge-alumni-are-producing-a-portable-fridge-that-runs-on-sun-and-water/