SureChill

SureChill is a patented technology that allows energy to be stored and cooling to take place in a passive way.

The technology allows refrigerator units to be charged up over a brief period of a few hours and dispenses 'cold' in a highly regulated way.

Why is this an important development?

In Developing Countries

Many places in the World receive only a small number of hours of mains electricity each day. In poorer countries the power is rationed to five or six hours each day in order to spread around what little is available.

Conventional refrigerators will hold their temperature for only a few hours. If these are well insulated and lined with icepacks they may last up to 12 hours but since power is delivered in small doses and there may be days of power outage, this method is unreliable leading to the spoiling of food.

SureChill can provide safe and stable refrigeration for more than one week with no power.

In the Medical Field

Vaccines are very sensitive to temperature and must be kept strictly between 2 and 8 degrees Centigrade.

With poor quality, intermittent power supplies particularly in developing countries it is a challenge to keep vaccines within their safe temperature limits.

Ice is commonly used to keep vaccines cool but temperature control is poor and the ice will often freeze vaccines making many of them ineffective.

SureChill is ideal for the safe keeping of vaccines and Blood.

In the UK

With the ever increasing demand for electricity and a drive to reduce the need for fossil fuel powered generation, it is becoming important to find ways to spread the electrical load and if possible trigger demand only when there is spare capacity. This is the concept of the ‘Smart Grid’.

SureChill enables domestic fridges to operate for long periods with no electricity. This means that the electricity provider could control when they supply power to this device meaning lower tariff for the consumer and reduced need to generate for the supplier.

There are a couple of other advantages – Power cuts are likely in the next few years in the UK as peak demand hits the limits of generation. The SureChill technology will be invaluable both domestically and commercially in this case.

One of the challenges facing refrigeration engineers is the stabilisation of temperature with a refrigerator compartment. Most domestic fridges will have a four or five degree difference between the top and bottom of the compartment. Fans are fitted to most modern refrigerators to stir up the air and prevent it from settling in this way. Without power this stirring is not possible. Because of the science of the SureChill technology it is able to deliver stable temperatures throughout the compartment and will react to any hotspots inside keeping all corners of the fridge at the same temperature.

Solar and renewable energy applications

Most renewable energy generators are reacting to weather conditions – solar when the sun shines, wind when the wind blows etc. This makes them difficult to harness effectively without storage.

Conventional solar refrigerators use lead-acid batteries to store electricity and the battery in turn supplies power on demand to the refrigerator. The problem with this we have found over the years is that it is difficult to get a battery to last for more than say, six years. The battery will fail gradually and often solar refrigerator systems are abandoned or plundered for their components as they fail.

Using the SureChill technology with a solar refrigerator will allow it to operate for long cloudy periods with little or no sunshine and can give unprecedented levels of performance to this niche market.

The SureChill technology has the added advantage that it has a design life in excess of the remainder of the refrigerator components taking the likely system lifetime beyond ten years and potentially up to 20 years.

SureChill is a patented technology and is owned by Bright Light Solar Ltd, UK.

All enquiries to: estore@brightlightsolar.com or telephone +44 0(1654) 712713