Clay Refrigerator Requires Zero Energy to Keep Food Cool

Costs 5500 Rupees in India...only $81.92, but only available in India right now.
Keeps food about 15 degrees (F) cooler than room temperature.



An Indian entrepreneur has created a refrigerator made entirely from clay that keeps food cool without using any electricity. Mansukhbhai Raghavbhai Prajapati, a Gujarat-based potter, makes his natural MittiCool refrigerator to provide an alternative for people in rural areas who can’t afford conventional refrigerators.


The MittiCool fridge uses the natural cooling effect of water evaporation to keep vegetables fresh for up to a week and store milk for three days before it spoils. Water from the upper chambers drips down the side of the clay fridge and takes away heat as it evaporates, leaving the chambers cool. The water is stored in the upper chamber and can be used for drinking via a small faucet tap on the front lower end of the chamber. Two shelves in the lower chamber are used for storing food-the first is used for vegetables and fruits, while the second shelf can be used for storing milk.

looks like this would hold a lot more food than 2 clay pots with moist sand, which is the evaporative cooler I'm familiar with. Who knows? Maybe something like this will become available if electricity becomes too unreliable? Of course, it will also be a lot more expensive here if that happens

Better sharpen up your pottery skills.

Looks like a good alternative for some folks... However, with the high humidity we have here it probably wouldn't do a whole lot for us.

Some areas could be helpful BUT, if you are fortunate to have a spring or running creek, that water is often as cool for such use. In yrs back, many used these areas for cooling by using containers & setting in cool water or even building a small box over it.

Anyone fortunate to have such earth cooled water should check out such use in case of need during outages. Where you live can offer (or negate) such options.

@Mini Horses, I was thinking about dangling my feet in that cool stream or spring! Too bad, we don't have one.
@frustratedearthmother, never thought about the humidity, and we live in one of the humidity capitals of the US.

Homemade...like the one @Britesea mentioned

You could do like the Amish do. Dig a very deep hole. Make sure it's fenced off so no one falls in accidentally. Lower food down on a wooden shelf with ropes all the way to the bottom to stay cool.

A newer application of an ancient idea....good for him!!! I love it! In these mountains, folks used springs to keep food cool and then progressed from there to build spring houses for the same purpose. They would build troughs for the spring water to flow through and sit crocks holding their foods down in the troughs.

Some were more innovative still and dug cellar houses that combined the cool of the earth with the piped in spring water to form a cool room with a cooler trough to store most of their food supplies that required the cool and damp to stay fresh.

Oft times the spring was then piped out of the spring house or cellar into livestock watering containers so that the livestock benefited from the cool water also. I know places that still have this going on, but it requires springs or even cold mountain streams to implement this effectively.