Moroccan Engineer Develops Eco-Friendly Clay Refrigerator for Off-Grid Communities

This clay refrigerator, called Go Energy Less, allows food to be kept cool without electricity, thanks to a water evaporation system. Rawya Lamhar, a young Moroccan engineer, created this refrigerator in 2015, during a trip to a village in the mountainous region of Khénifra in Morocco, as part of her final engineering project in environmental engineering. The young woman noticed on site that electricity and running water are lacking in this remote area, making it difficult to refrigerate food and medicines.

This is how the engineer and her friends decided to create a clay refrigerator, an old preservation technique, adding a new touch to it. The Go Energy Less refrigerator is capable of preserving food and medicines without electricity at a temperature of 6°C in arid areas and 12°C in humid areas. The device is made up of two clay pots, small and large. Food and medicines are placed in the small pot while the large one and the empty space between the two pots are filled with fine sand that must be watered with half a liter of water one to two times a day. The installation must then be covered with a damp cloth to allow cooling by evaporation.

For optimal functionality, Go Energy Less must be installed in a ventilated and isolated place, raised and not near the wall. If all these conditions are met, this clay refrigerator can preserve food products for about 10 to 15 days, Rawya Lamhar assured. Since its creation in 2015, this refrigerator has been widely adopted by populations in remote areas that are not connected to the electricity grid. In addition to food, this system allows people suffering from diabetes to keep their medications - insulin - at the right temperature (between 2 and 8°C).

Rawya Lamhar and her colleagues have perfected the design of this refrigerator with the help of two architects from Marrakech. Then they created their company, Go Energyless Solutions, and set up a production plant near Marrakech that manufactures two models of this refrigerator, which sell for 220 dirhams (20 euros) and 500 dirhams (45 euros). The more expensive model, more elaborate, is intended for urban customers while the other is for rural areas. The inventors even had a specialized laboratory in Rabat conduct a study on the safety of the product, proving that it is not harmful to health. Since then, Go Energy Less has been in high demand outside Morocco, particularly in Europe, the United States and even Asia.