Blog | Jan 07, 2020 | Anish Paul Antony

Over the past year as part of my on-going work at D-Lab, I have been working with Collectives for Integrated Livelihood Initiative (CInI – An Initiative of the Tata Trust) to pilot evaporative cooling technologies in Western India. With support from the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS), this work builds upon a scoping study I led in May 2018 which demonstrated the need for evaporative coolers in Gujarat, India to improve vegetable shelf life and farmer incomes.

Overview of evaporative cooling technologies

Evaporative cooling technologies function according to a basic principle called “evaporative cooling,” where the evaporation of water from a surface removes heat, creating a cooling effect, in the same way, that the evaporation of perspiration cools the human body. When water evaporates, it takes heat with it, and in relatively low humidity climates like Gujarat, where it is hot and dry during the months of February to June that coincide with the harvest season, technologies that take advantage of this cooling process can effectively preserve vegetables longer and improve their shelf life.

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