Phase change material cooling is reliable and cost effective

Using phase change materials can reduce the energy consumption of the freezer by 20 percent.

For cold chain business prospects, I would like to focus more about where the business prospect lies for all of us. I mean, if you take a step back as a cold chain player in the industry, we are essentially serving two kinds of people, say consumers. One is a producer or a farmer or a FMCG company and they at the other end are consumers like us. The producer or the farmer wants the maximum price for their product and we as a consumer want a good product and preferably at the lowest price. We as cold chain players are just enablers moving the product from one end to the other. We think the only way to increase the business prospects is to improve the efficiencies in a sustainable way, at every level of the cool chain, starting from storage to moving the products in bulk to moving the products at the last mile. 

Phase change material 

For storing products on the shelf, we can not ignore the sustainability aspects anymore. So the future of the cold chain business really lies in improving efficiencies at every leg of the value chain, right from storage to moving the products to the last mile or keeping the products at the shelves using a refrigerator, improving efficiency at every leg in a rather sustainable way. 

And how we have been enabling this is using the platform – phase change material technology. So how we are enabling a sustainable cold chain using the phase change material technology at every leg is what I am going to reveal. At the cold storage level, using the phase change material technology, we have developed a solar micro cold room, which is a completely grid independent solar based cold room. It is a small cold room which can be deployed at the farm. It is a small cold room which can even be deployed at any retail supermarket store, and it does not need any grid electricity. It runs completely on solar and it will store the product at the right temperature. Some of these cold storages have also been used for pre-cooling activities right at the farm level. Moving on from the storage to moving the products in bulk, we have phase change materials enabled for reefer trucks, which essentially do not use diesel for maintaining the temperature. 

Do you run the compressor on electricity; freeze the phase change materials and it will maintain the temperature for the next 12 hours. We are right now also working on fast charging of these phase change materials on trucks so that it can even be used for longer durations of 48 hours, 96 hours, 120 hours and so on. It can also enable refrigeration in electric trucks because in electric trucks you do not. You can not really run the compressor, you will need a huge amount of battery and a lot of space, so you are also enabling a sustainable way of moving the produce in a truck and the third is the last mile delivery. Insulated boxes and PCM 

Essentially, it is the combination of the insulated boxes with the phase change materials to deliver the products at the right temperature, right at the door steps of the consumer. Let us say a market or from a distributor to a wholesaler, to a distributor etc. We also have an opposite which is a solar dryer, which is not really related to the cold chain. Everything is a solar dryer, which essentially runs 24/7 for drying of fruits and vegetables at the right temperatures against sunrise to tomatoes, you can have sunrise pineapples. These dried produce are then sold at a much higher price than the regular tomato or regular pineapple. 

Now this again helps in reducing the wastage and thereby helps in increasing the income of the farmer and the income of the producer at the other end. Another example, which I would like to share, is a freezer in the refrigerator. Using the phase change materials, these freezers and the refrigerators have been made more energy efficient, so we have come across a study with the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation which essentially says that using phase change materials you can reduce the energy consumption of the freezer by 20 percent. The future is essentially addressing every value chain across the cold chain in a more sustainable way. Phase change in material based technologies is one way, there could be other ways of addressing it. There are electric trucks you can use. If you can use solar panels to run your whole cold room, there are multiple ways of doing it, but the future of the cold chain business lies there.