Institute of Refrigeration, Air-Conditioning and Environmental Engineering

Sustainable Off-grid solutions for Pharmacies and Hospitals in Africa

The EU project “SophiA”, which started in October, aims at developing two solar-powered 40-foot container systems for remote hospitals in Africa. A first container will provide reliable cooling and storage of vaccinations, medicines and blood plasma at low cost. The cooling requirement at three different temperature levels (+5, -30 and -70 ° C) is reached efficiently and with climate-friendly natural refrigerants. In addition to the refrigerated container, a second container ensures a secure power supply and supplies the hospital with clean drinking water and hot water as well as steam for sterilization.

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A gentler alternative to cool down after a hot sauna session is to use a snow cabin. This involves going into a cold room containing artificial snow. The snow allows the body to cool down more gently.

Snow cabins are a special practice in the world of saunas and there are yet to become more common.

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Smart irrigation Cube for sustainable agriculture in the Mediterranean region "SmaCuMed" - in Morocco

Since June 2020, the EU-PRIMA research project "SmaCuMed” focused on the development and application of solutions for food systems and water resources in the Mediterranean basin. SmaCuMed’s main goal is to develop a fully autonomous operation plant in remote areas of Morocco, which is robust and equipped with a low-cost real-time sensor system for water production and irrigation management as well as environmental and socio-economic sustainability studies to support regional strategies for sustainable farming.

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The EGRreact research project plans to convert a series CHP natural gas engine from lean operation to stoichiometric operation. One of the four cylinders is to act as a donor cylinder.

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Heat Transition in the Industry

The WIN4climate project aims at developing and presenting processes and solutions for decarbonisation and flexibilisation of heat supply in industry in a real business environment and make them available to the general public.

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The 2050 climate targets call for a significant expansion of combined heat and power (CHP) activities, together with an increase of renewable energies. In this context, hydrogen has the great potential to chemically store and transport surplus electricity from renewable energy sources in large quantities ("power-to-gas"). It is ideally suited to bridge the gap between CHP and climate-friendly energy sources.

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