Executive Summary
The Milk to Market Initiative and the SMU Hunt Institute teamed up to serve rural Rwandan dairy farmers needing an overnight milk preservation solution. We developed a low-cost refrigeration system that operates independently of an electric grid.
Dairy product is 6% of Rwanda’s national GDP, with over 700 million liters produced in 2016. However, 50% of this milk never reaches the market. Rwandan small-scale dairy farmers milk livestock morning and night, taking up to 20L of raw milk per day in jerry cans to local milk collection centers that then treat and distribute dairy products to formal markets. With only 2% of rural areas in Rwanda having access to the national electric grid, farmers lack a way to cool raw milk product overnight, ~12 hrs, before bringing milk to a center in the morning. Collection centers accept Rwandan Grade II milk, which must be cooled from its initial temperature of ~101F to 45F within four hours, and Rwandan Grade I milk (U.S. FDA GRADE A milk), which must be cooled from ~101F to 45F within two hours. Source: Rwandan Development Board, U.S. FDA Our final design cools 1.5L of milk from 101F to 45F in 4 hrs, meeting Rwandan Grade II standards, and keeps milk under 45F up to 12 hrs. Each unit of our final product costs 97 USD. |
Finished Product Graphic
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