Executive summary. The African vaccination week, organized by the World Health Organization (WHO) each year, has the potential to drastically lower the ...
DEVELOPMENT OF AN INTELLIGENT CONTROLLED SOLAR POWERED VACCINE COOLING HOLDER WITH ENERGY MONITORING SYSTEM
HPC Buitendach School of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering North-West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa Supervisor: Prof R Gouws November 2017 ____________________________________________________________________________________ Executive summary The African vaccination week, organized by the World Health Organization (WHO) each year, has the potential to drastically lower the amount of deaths among young children in Africa. The most important aspect that is needed to make any vaccination program a success is the cold chain. According to the WHO keeping vaccines in the cold chain and minimizing the energy that is required to do that is some of the main issues that need to be addressed for future development. Vaccines need to be stored between the temperatures of +2°C up to +8°C for the entire duration of the vaccination week. This includes the time it takes for these vaccines to be transported to the location where the vaccination program will take place. Aside from the very strict temperature control that is required, the locations where these vaccination weeks take place do not always have access to electricity. A vaccine cooling and storage unit that can keep vaccines in the cold chain (+2°C to +8°C) was designed to address this problem. The cooling and storage unit was designed to be compact, portable, well isolated and to make use of a PV solar energy system as a source of electricity. The cooling unit makes use of a liquid to air thermoelectric cooling module connected to some tubing and a liquid pump to cool the inside of the cooling unit. The design process also included designing a control system that controls the temperature inside the cooling holder and a monitoring system to monitor the battery voltage and capacity. The system also has a user interface that displays the temperatures inside and outside of the cooling holder, as well as the battery voltage and capacity. Also see other projects [1]-[3].
Project summary
References: [1] W.A. Pelser and R. Gouws, “Design of an intelligent controller for a renewable energy efficient bulk storage tank”, Southern African Universities Power Engineering Conference, pp. 437-443, January 2015. [2] R. Gouws and H. van Jaarsveldt, “Thermal and efficiency analysis of a single phase induction motor with Peltier devices”, World Journal of Engineering, pp. 63-70, January 2012. [3] R. Gouws and T. Lukhwareni, “Factors influencing the performance and efficiency of solar water pumping systems: A review”, International Journal of Physical Sciences, pp. 6169-6180, December 2012.
