Here's an article I came across on reddit, Fridge without Electricity. This is just great.


-JRJ

Its a great idea. But it does have some problems. One, it doesn't work in humid climates. Hence the old wives saying about thundery weather making milk go sour. And it requires a fair amount of water, which isn't available in a lot of places that aren't humid.

It is a good idea.

But AROTC is probably right about humid climates. Perhaps the addition of a solar-powered fan would help with evaporation?

I also think this would be in the "vegetable crisper" temperature range. Great for produce, fair for milk and cheese, but not cold enough for meat.

Pioneer methods for natural refrigeration in this part of the world (Western Canada)included hanging meat/dairy down in a cribbed well, and the creation of well-insulated icehouses that were filled in winter months.

If you want a real refrigerator without electricity you can get an aqua-ammonia refrigerator. There is a company in Ohio that still makes them.

They run by heat, (Kerosene) they have a burner (wick) under them just like a kero heater.






This is how the refrigerator works in travel trailers and motor homes. They are aqua-ammonia refrigerators. They get the heat from an electric element or propane burner. I’m sure a creative person could improvise (part out a kero heater) a burner for one of these to make a usable small refrigerator for emergencies or a hunting camp or other remote place. All you need is a refrigerator out of an old trailer and a garage sale kero heater )I see these all the time for $5.00) and the ability to fabricate a few things to kit-bash these 2 things into a workable refrigerator.




I just did a search for one of these, a few sites come up. Here is the link to one of them. $1600.00 for it

For the most part they look like a normal refrigerator, other then some vents at the bottom.
http://www.thenaturalhome.com/servel400k.htm



At a cabin the big one would be nice. But for emergency or portable use building one from a trailer (because they are at least ½ the size) would be better.



I agree that the one mentioned above would not work in humid environments. It’s the same way for swamp coolers (desert air conditioners) while they are great for a place with 5 to 10% humidity, they are useless for 70% and up humidity.

From what I have read and watched(never actually applied), if you dig below the frost line, you can accomplish the same thing. While it may be 80 degrees out, 2-3 feet down it could be a cool 30ish degrees. You will have to have some sort of insulating cover for this (such as moss, etc.)
Anyone disagree with this thought?

On a side note, in reference to the previous post by Bob, I used a very large swamp cooler last year while working outdoors at Daytona Bike Week and found it to be a refreshing ally to the humid heat in Florida.

Below about 5,000 ft, you can expect the temp below ground to average between 45 and 65 degrees, depending on location. The lava tubes around Mt. Adams and Mt. St. Helens average around 45 degrees most of the year, although there is at least one cave that maintains ice in it the whole year. Likewise, I think the big hole in South Dakota is a little bit warmer, but then it breathes a lot more than the lava tubes. IIRC, Carlsbad and Mammoth maintain about 65 ambient pretty much the whole year. The government used to store cheese and butter in some of the caves around Mt. Adams, thus some were named the "Cheese" and "Butter" cave systems. As a whole, I found the lava tubes far too humid even at the lower temps, considering you don't go in them without at least a hard hat, coveralls, boots and gloves.

Bike week is early enough in the year (still winter here) that evaporative cooling will still kinda work, especially if you have a big enough air flow, so long as it doesn't rain. Right now, a swamp cooler in central Florida would be fairly worthless. You'd be better off with just a fan. IIRC the air chillers in Pensacola at NTTC Corry Station used an open water circuit on the exchanger elements, but that had more to do with improving thermal conductance to ambient I think than with evaporative cooling. It wasn't the heat of vaporization that was being utilized so much as the fact that water flowing over a surface makes a much better thermocouple.

Any gas that can be condensed into a liquid can be used as a refrigerant. Ammonia is one of those who's temp range is more suited to refrigeration applications, in that the pressure vessel required need not be so robust.

It seems counter-intuitive that by the application of heat, you can actually cool a volume of air.

Cooling below the ambient temperature is what these zeer pots do, but it couldn't be considered refrigeration. They can get to 59-60F, not to refrigerator temps.

The summers in Darfur can easily reach 110F, so cooling food down to 60F would be a big deal there. And it would probably be a good deal here on high-temp days when the power goes off.

Sue

Has anyone ever taken a refrigerator out of a travel trailer and tried to convert it to Kerosene? It would seem to (conceptually) to be a simple thing to provide a source of heat to get it to run for you. One possible problem area I can see is regulation of the heat to prevent ice up. But I think this could be handled by running the heat at a low temp below the point of freeze up. It would take several days of tinkering with the flame height to get a workable setting. But not hard to do.


Or you could just run it off propane, in this case you only need to hook up the supply line to it.