Clean and efficient cooling in vaccine transportation using Rotating Magnetocaloric Effect

Introduction

Every year, 1.5 million lives are lost worldwide due to insufficient access to vaccination. Paradoxically, over 50% of all produced vaccines are wasted, mostly due to ineffective temperature control during storage and transportation.

Challenges in Vaccine Cold Chain

The major challenges of the vaccine cold chain include:

1. Strict Limitations on Aerial Transport: Increasingly stringent regulations are imposed on aerial transport due to the safety hazards of refrigerant gases.
2. High Power Demand: Active refrigeration devices require high power, especially in last-mile deliveries where the electricity supply is unreliable.
3. Carbon Footprint: The use of high global warming potential (GWP) refrigerants contributes significantly to the carbon footprint.

Project Overview

The Magccine project aims to revolutionize the vaccine cold chain by developing a clean and efficient solid-state magnetic refrigerator based on a novel approach: the rotating magnetocaloric effect (RMCE). This technology is currently patent pending (2023) by project partners.

Expected Benefits

By reducing the amount of permanent magnets required, the RMCE is expected to:

• Drastically cut production costs.
• Decrease device volume and weight.
• Enhance efficiency without the use of high GWP or hazardous refrigerant gases.

This highlights its role as a key enabling technology for tackling vaccine cold chain challenges.

Project Goals

Magccine's goal is to develop and optimize a fully operational prototype for vaccine refrigeration in the 2-8 ºC temperature range, which is required by most vaccines. This project addresses the generation of clean cooling and clean cold chain transportation categories of this challenge.

Required Expertise

To achieve these goals, the project requires top-level expertise in:

• Magnetocaloric materials
• Magnetic field design
• Thermodynamic simulations
• Heat pumps

This expertise is perfectly matched by the complementary skills of the five academic institutions involved: U.Porto, CNRS, U. Seville, U.Aveiro, and U.Ljubljana, along with the two industrial partners, MagREEsource and Helium 3.

Advisory Board

Our endeavors will be guided by an experienced advisory board, which includes global key leaders such as:

• WHO
• UNICEF
• Cemafroid
• APIRAC
• IIR
• Medgree
• Addvolt