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Public Funding for Engineeronics Limited

Registration Number 14579911

CoolRun Malawi

175,412
2024-06-01 to 2026-05-31
Collaborative R&D
Agriculture is the key industry in Malawi; however, given the sub-tropical, climate, the cold supply chain for fruit, vegetables and other temperature sensitive goods is lacking. In most of Malawi, the electricity supply is unreliable, and the increasing cost of fossil fuels makes it expensive to operate internal combustion driven generators and compressors. The lack of a reliable, affordable, and available cold supply chain leads to high levels of wastage up to 50% of some crops harvested. In rural areas, farming is mostly on a subsistence basis and a female occupation. Farmers either sell their produce directly (or via resellers) at markets or roadside walking up to 2 hours to reach their pitch. Because the crop is not chilled, it cannot be easily sold to shops or supermarkets where higher prices could be realised. Our innovation is to develop a micro, affordable, mobile, sustainable refrigeration system comprising a modular refrigerated box cooled by Phase Change Material (PCM) panels. The crop is pre-cooled at a central location using a solar powered refrigeration unit that also cools the PCM panels. Temperature integrity is monitored via sensors that monitor GPS position and temperature and the data is transmitted to a cloud database for verification by supplier and customer alike. The design and development work will be undertaken by Aston University in conjunction with its SME partners Hubl Logistics, Enterprise Projects Ventures Limited (EPVL), Malawi Fruits and Engineeronics Ltd in the UK and Modern Farming Technology (MFT) in Malawi. EPVL will supply the systems and the prototype will be evaluated in the field by MFT and Malawi Fruits. MFT will assess any gender related issues with the design. A digital twin of the design will be developed at Aston and performance of the prototype will be compared to the digital twin which will inform the final design. Aston University will conduct studies of the impact of the technology on gender and unrepresented groups. Fruit and vegetable farming and selling in Malawi are activities divided based on gender with land ownership male dominated with females relegated to farming and sales. The technology is being developed with farming and selling enterprises in Malawi in mind to empower women to develop their enterprise and social standing by adding value to their activities. CoolRun enables users to cut waste dramatically providing more to sell and reach markets where prices are higher thereby generating greater returns.

3D Printed Housing Unit for PEM Fuel Cell Bi-Polar Plates

49,995
2023-06-01 to 2023-11-30
Grant for R&D
Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells (PEMFCs) can play a crucial role in decarbonizing the transport industry. PEMFCs use hydrogen as fuel to produce electricity, emitting only water as a by-product. This makes PEMFCs an attractive technology for powering vehicles, as they do not emit harmful pollutants or greenhouse gases. However, the higher weight, complex manufacturing processes and cost are the major barriers in commercialization of the PEMFCs. In this project, a novel manufacturing process is proposed to develop and manufacture the Proton-exchange membrane fuel cells, which will reduce the fuel cell's weight and cost by 40-60%. This will be achieved by two major steps; firstly, using an open-pore cellular foam material as flow plate channels for the fuel cell and secondly, constructing complete PEM single cell using a plastic housing made by fused deposition modeling 3D printing.

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