The purpose of a bicycle-powered refrigerator is to allow someone to take a bike trip while keeping their food and drinks cool. This project can also be used in a poor neighborhood of Africa or Asia where electricity is still a distant dream. Moreover, this can be made more useful if we can connect this with a windmill or flowing water. If its pedals connect with the turbine revolving using wind or hydro energy, then this refrigerator will become an automatic machine just like a fridge at our home. This project idea is for students of mechanical, electrical and physics.
Concept :
When we pump out gases from the water box in the refrigerator by paddling a bicycle, we create a low-pressure area inside the box and because of this low-pressure area, water starts evaporating, and for that evaporation, water needs heat which it takes from the surrounding area inside the refrigerator. In this way, it cools our refrigerator.
Steam is generated in the process of evaporation which later been absorbed by Zeolite as shown in the video . Absorption of steam is a property of zeolite that's why we use it for this experiment.
What are Zeolites?
Zeolites are microporous, aluminosilicate minerals commonly used as commercial adsorbents. An example mineral formula is Na2Al2Si3O10·2H2O, the formula for natrolite. The major producers in 2010 were China, South Korea, Japan, Jordan, Turkey, Slovakia, and United States. The ready availability of zeolite-rich rock at low cost and the shortage of competing minerals and rocks are probably the most important factors for its large-scale use. You can purchase it from any mineral supplier in your city. Just google it with your city name.
Related articles :
Hazon webpage
Related PDF :
Human powered refrigerators
