Chemical Engineering DPhil project developing engineering response to cold storage and water supply issue wins Award

Engineering Science DPhil student Gayatri Sundar Rajan received the inaugural £20,000 Innovation 4 All Research Award from the Worshipful Company of Engineers and Tech4All in 2023 for her 'INDECO' project.

INDECO aims to reduce water scarcity, hunger, and generate income for smallholding farmers in low-to-middle income countries by improving access to clean water, reducing food wastage with post-harvest refrigeration, and enabling greater profits from each harvest.

800 million people globally do not have access to basic drinking water. 300 million tons of food (enough for 444 million people) is lost annually due to lack of post-harvest refrigeration in developing countries. The low-cost, off-grid integrated desalination and cold storage system will clean contaminated groundwater and provide cold storage for agricultural products, using solar cooling to integrate renewable energy, clean water, and cooling capacity.

The Innovation4All Award offers a £20,000 cash prize to support ideas that develop ‘creative engineering-based solutions to help those who are disadvantaged or in poverty’. The award is intended to encourage engineers to use their skills and expertise to create solutions to alleviate the causes or consequences of underlying issues leading to people being disadvantaged in any way or in poverty.

She says, “The award will support the experimental work and real-world impact associated with my DPhil project, INDECO, in developing a desalination and refrigeration cogeneration system for low-to-middle income countries. I would like to thank my research team, Professor Nick Hankins, Dr. Binjian Nie, Dr. Christian Peters, and Seda Zeynep Keles for their continued support in the project development”.

The 2024 competition is now open for submissions until 1st March. 

Chemical and Process Engineering Research Group