Project Description
The Milk to Market Initiative began as the Fish to Market Initiative in August of 2016. SMU's Hunt Institute for Engineering and Humanity reached out to our team with the proposal of a low-cost, portable fish cooler for use in developing nations. After identifying our contact in Rwanda, Mr. Nshuti, we discovered that a more applicable problem was milk preservation for small-scale, rural dairy farmers in Rwanda. Working with Mr. Nshuti during Fall 2016, we identified original objectives, constraints, and theory for our product. During Spring 2017, we refined our design and created multiple prototypes. After months of designing, prototyping, and testing, we are proud to present IGI CUBA Coolers, an affordable cooling solution independent of an electric grid.
Fall Goals Achieved
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Spring Goals Achieved
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Final Product DesignOur final design pumps milk continuously through a channel cooled by two Peltier thermoelectric plates operating off a temperature differential. Two pump tubes are inserted into the jerry can opening and run small volumes of milk through the channel, re-circulating milk throughout the system as it cools. The jerry can of milk is initially placed outside the color to maximize the benefits of the ambient surrounding temperature to cool the milk quickly to room temperature. After 1 hour, as determined by our testing, the jerry can is placed into the cooler to be cooled from ambient temperature to 45F. Our final product design cools milk from 101F to 45F within 4 hrs, meeting Rwandan Grade II standards. As cooling technologies continue to evolve, we hope to modify our design to operate self-sufficiently without user assistance, but IGI CUBA Coolers already have the potential to double dairy farmer income, have been kept simple and affordable using commercially-available products, and could be scaled to function in any developing nation.
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Moving forward, we plan to work with the Hunt Institute to evaluate the feasibility of large-scale production of our product or hand-off to a future team.
See how our design has evolved from our theory from Fall semester 2016: