Clean and efficient cooling in vaccine transportation using Rotating Magnetocaloric Effect

Every year 1.5 million lives are lost worldwide due to insufficient access to vaccination while, paradoxically, over 50% of all produced vaccines are wasted, mostly due to ineffective temperature control during storage/transportation. The major challenges of the vaccine cold chain are the evermore strict limitations imposed on their aerial transport due to the safety hazards of refrigerant gases, the high-power demand of active refrigeration devices in last-mile deliveries where the electricity supply is unreliable, and the significant carbon footprint of high global warming potential refrigerants. The Magccine project aims to revolutionize the vaccine cold chain by developing a clean and efficient solid state magnetic refrigerator based on a novel approach: the rotating magnetocaloric effect (RMCE) – a recently (2023) patent pending technology by project partners. By reducing the amount of permanent magnets required, the RMCE is expected to enable drastic cuts in the device’s production cost, volume and weight, while enhancing efficiency without the use of any high GWP or hazardous refrigerant gases, highlighting its role as a key enabling technology for tackling vaccine cold chain challenges. Magccine´s goal is to develop and optimize a fully operational prototype for vaccine refrigeration in the 2-8 ºC temperature range, which is required by most vaccines, addressing the Generation of clean cooling and clean cold chain transportation categories of this Challenge. To this end, this project requires top-level expertise on magnetocaloric materials, magnetic field design, thermodynamic simulations and heat pumps which are perfectly matched by the complementary expertise of the five academic institutions (U.Porto, CNRS, U. Seville, U.Aveiro, U.Ljubljana) and the two industrial partners (MagREEsource, Helium 3). Our endeavors will be guided by an experienced advisory board including global key leaders such as WHO, UNICEF, Cemafroid, APIRAC, IIR, Medgree, and Addvolt.