Every year thousands of tons of vegetables and fruits get destroyed because farmers cannot afford cold storage facilities in developing countries. According to a recent study conducted by United Nations around 45% of fruits and vegetables are wasted even before reach local markets.

This causes loss of labor, money and time invested in growing the crop. To prevent this, a Belgian product developer Mr. Arne Pauwels has developed an easy and affordable solution for low income farmers. He calls it WakatiOne, which is a tent that consists a evaporative coolers made from 3D printed parts and a low power solar panel.

Mr. Pauwels was studying for his master’s thesis at the University of Antwerp when he found out that temperature is not the most important factor in saving fruits and other perishable vegetables. These farm products stay fresh even in the hot fields until they are harvested and his research came to a conclusion that to keep the produce fresh is to keep them well hydrated. He developed a low cost Wakati tent that works on principles of a evaporative coolers and uses a small solar panel of just three watts, Wakati creates a sterilized micro climate that doesn’t require expensive cooling systems.

“For the housing of the ventilator, we turned to 3D Printing. It enabled us to continuously optimize the design in the testing phase and allowed us to produce cost-effective functional prototypes in FDM (Fused Deposition Modeling) to convince investors and potential customers. In developing countries, there’s a major need for cheap solutions to limit post-harvest losses. Thanks to 3D Printing, I was able to develop a product at a reasonable cost without compromising the sustainability,” Arne said.

Wakati uses less than 1% energy a regular refrigerator and the solar panel which powers it makes it a portable device. The final version of Wakati was developed with the help of 3D printing company Materialise. Once the design of the blowers required for Wakati was ready it was printed on a stereolithography 3d printer which was using as a cast for the vacuum casting of mass production.

Source - http://www.inside3dp.com