Rouh
Battery powered evaporative cooling for refugee camps.
In Fall 2019, I served as Project Lead for Rouh, a humanitarian product designed to provide battery-powered thermal comfort to refugees living in uninsulated tents within harsh climates.
Our team included 4 mechanical engineers and 2 electrical engineers. We constrained our problem statement by designing within the context of the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan, and modeled our tent environment to represent the well-documented UNHCR Family Tent that is deployed in Zaatari. Over the course of the semester, we built two prototypes designed to provide thermal relief during hot and cold temperature swings via evaporative cooling and air circulation. Evaporative cooling is a low-powered method of cooling air by forcing it through a damp pad to evaporate water, and air circulation helps move warm air from a primary heat source around a tent with a fan, destratifying the space and preventing "cold zones" along the floor. We built two prototypes demonstrating this dual-function principle, each with a unique architecture. Physical testing was done with thermocouples to measure evaporative cooling performance, and an anemometer to measure air displacement. CFD modelling was finally used to visualize the paths of air circulation that might be achieved by our product in a tent environment.