Enviro-Cool

A British company called Enviro-Cool has created a rapid cooling technology called V-Tex that can chill Fanta, lager or even Champagne from room temperature to 5 degrees in less than 45 seconds.

The technology has been developed with the help of EU research funding and works on the basis of a cooling vortex that whizzes the drink round to chill it in record time, allowing you to uncork that bottle of white wine almost as soon as you bring it home from the shop.


While the V-Tex unit will manufactured and brought to market as a consumer product for anyone to put in their kitchens, it will also be a commercial product, and started life trying to solve an environmental problem very much caused by the commercial world. "You go into a petrol station on a motorway and you've got three, four walls full of chillers with drinks and they're so energy inefficient, they're not really necessary, because those drinks don't need to be stored cold, it's just for convenience, so that was the original thinking behind it," Kelvin Hall, creator of the V-Tex tells Wired.co.uk.

Enviro-Cool

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Hall is dedicated to bridging the gap between environmental technology and the consumer market and has in the past invented a water-saving device for urinals. "Everyone's talking about the importance of reducing carbon emissions and lowering energy use, so we've got an opportunity to do something about it," he says.

He set about building a device that would chill lots of drinks of all different sizes and shapes quickly. To get the drinks to mix without fizzing, he had to use a collapsed vortex, called a Rankine Vortex. "The key to it is the way we mix the liquid. If you try and cool a drink very quickly then the outside's going to freeze before the inside is cool. So you have to mix it in order to do that, but because a lot of drinks are carbonated, if you mix them when you open them they fizz."


Dutch researchers working with Hall developed an algorithm that provides the optimum speed for each type of drink, as bottles behave differently to cans, and glass, aluminium and plastic all have different heat transfer properties. The user enters the data about the drink into the control panel and the algorithm adjusts accordingly to provide the right spin speed.

The most efficient way to get water to zero is to put it next to ice, says Hall, so he created a flat, circular evaporator plate that builds about two and a half centimetres of ice on it. "That ice lasts for hours and it keeps the water cold, so the compressor doesn't have to work, so the only energy is spinning a motor, which uses a very tiny amount of energy, and that's basically why it's so energy efficient."

The consumer version of the product might eventually be able to be incorporated into fridges, says Hall, and one commercial unit will be enough to replace up to seven drinks fridges. The commercial model will also use a buffer to reduce the wait time for drinks to less than ten seconds.

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Not only does the V-Tex benefit the environment, it could also seriously benefits retailers. Refrigeration accounts for over 70 percent of the energy costs facing small retailers, and 50 percent of the costs facing an average supermarket.

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"I'm presenting the technology at the European Council in Brussels at the end of this month, and I want to campaign for governments to give a scrappage scheme to retailers who adopt this," says Hall.


If you want to get hold of a V-Tex unit you'll have to hold your horses for now unfortunately, as they won't actually be available until around the third quarter of next year.

Hall has been talking to a number of a white good manufacturers globally -- throwing them out of their comfort zone by telling them they'll need a new production line to combine refrigeration tech with washing machine mechanisms. He has entered into agreements with two big global players, both of which remain unnamed for now.

It's "still a little bit niche at the moment", says Hall, but he's already getting enquiries from retailers and consumers who are interested in selling and buying the V-Tex. He puts this down to it being immensely practical and user-friendly, but it also goes to show that you should never underestimate the attraction of a cold beer.