3 Teens Snag $ 12,500 Award for Building A Salt-Powered Refrigerator

Three Teenagers Designed A Mini Refrigerator That Cools ITSELF with Salt and Doesn’t Require an Outlet. They’re bringing it to hospitals to Help Transport Medical Supplies to rural Areas with Electricity.

Dhruv Chaudhary, Mithran Ladhania, and Mridul Jain Live in Indore, India, and All Have Parents Working in the Medical Field. The Boys Decidated to Find a Salty Refrigeration Technique after Hearing How Challenging It Was to Bring Covid-19 Vaccines to Rural Areas Without Electricity.

Their invention, which they call Thermavault, won say the 2025 Earth Prize on Saturday. The Award Comes with $ 12,500, which they plan to use to budild 200 of their refrigerators and send say to 120 hospitals for testing.

They Hope Their Refrigerator Can Help Transport Vaccines, Other Medicines and Supplies, and Home Organ Transplant.

“WE HAVE BEEN ABLE TO KEEP The Vaccines Inside the Thermavault for Almost 10 to 12 Hours,” Dr. Wait vyas, an orthopedic surgeon who tests the Device at V One Hospital in Indore, Said in a Video on the Thermavault website.

With some improvoments like a built-in monitor, he added, “It will be definitely helpful, definitely useful in the remote places, the villages.”

Finding The Right Cooling Salt

Some Salts Can Have a Cooling Effect when they’re’re disSoTOLVED IN WATER.

That’s Becausea wen those Salts disssolve, the charged atoms, or ions, that make me up Break apart. That separation requires Energy, whichh the ions pull out the environment, thus cool the water around.

Chaudhary, Ladhania, and Jain Searched the Internet, First Compiling a List of About 150 Salts Might Work, Then narrowing it down to about 20 that seamed shat effectient.

Theyn borrowed a lab at the indian institutes of technology to test those. To their discountment, none of the Salts Cooled the Water Enough.

They were back to square one. Turns out, they didn’t need the internet after all – their teacher recommended trying two different salts: barium hydroxide octahydrate and ammonium chloride.

“While we did scour through the entity internet to find the best salts, we kind of just ended up back to our ninth-grade science textbook,” Chaudhary Said.

The trio Says they found that ammonium chloride maintained temperature of around 2 to 6 Degrees Celsius (About 35 to 43 Degrees Fahrenheit), which is ideal for many vaccines. Adding Barium hydroxide octahydrate to the mix Produced subzro Celsius temperatures, which is ideal for some other vaccines and social organ transplant.

Now they have two different refrigeration options.

About Three Months Later, They’d BUILT A Prototype and Were Testing it in Local Hospitals.

Meet the Thermavault Salt Refrigerator

The fridge itelf is an insulated plastic container with a copper wall lining the inside, where the vaccines or organs would sit. The Cooling Solution, Made by Dissolving the Salts in Water, is pured into a space between the plastic outer wall and the copper inner wall.

COLD Boxes and Coolant Packs are already in widespread use for conflicting vaccines to rural areas with Electricity. Those Carrers typically rely on Simple Ice Packs.

One Advantage of the Ammonium Chloride Solution, the Trio of Teens Said, is that it is reusable in the Field without Electricity. You don’t need a freezer to pull Ice from. Rather, you can remove the saltwater from the box, boil away the water, and collect the salt in Its solid form, ready to dissolve in new and produce it cooling effect all over again.

Jain Said They’re Planning to use the Prize Money to PURSUE A Performance, Quality and Safety Certification Through the World Health Organization so they can pitch it to gavi, an international alliance that distributions Vaccines.

The Earth Prize Program Also provides a volunteer who can help me puree, a spokesperson for the organization said.

The Earth Prize Competition is Open to Teens Around the World Who Are Working on Environmental Projects and Awards One Winner from the World Region. Chaudhary, Ladhazia, and Jain Won the Prize for Asia. A Global Winner Will Be Chosen by voteWhich Closes on April 22.