Wednesday, 21 September 2011

The Actual Real Outline - The Miracles of the Refrigerator & Refrigeration

Hi,

So this is my final outline...for real! So please don't pay any notice to the two below. Sorry for the trouble.
Hope everything is in order.

Specific Innovation of Interest
The innovation of interest is the refrigerator. The reason for choosing this innovation is that it has impacted our world greatly as before the refrigerator storing food for a long period of time was difficult as well as bothersome. The paper will aim to illustrate the history of the fridge and how we have reached from the simple "ice box" to a fridge as well as the implications of the introduction of fridges (benefits and negatives).

Rationale for Selecting Innovation
How it has influenced the world already...Both positively and negatively
- Positive Affects:
+ Allows for long term storage of food
+ More economical --> food does not rot quickly
+ Can buy lots of things at once instead of things little by little
+ Practicality --> easy to find & store food in fridges as they are made with places for different foods
+ Can be bought somewhat easily (readily available)
+ Allows for many of our comforts nowadays --> cold drinks, iced drinks, ice cream, etc...
+ Allows for foods found in cold countries to be eaten in other places in the world (like fruits)
+ Less space required & less effort by people (cold food readily available inside house)
- Negative Affects:
+ Fridges are not environme
ntal --> contribution to global warming
+ Before they used products such as ammonia, methyl chloride & sulfur dioxide which led to death when said chemicals leaked (1920's)
+ We become reliant on appliances like these --> don't know how to do things the old fashioned way
+ Our supermarkets use the refrigeration process as well --> further reliance
+ We consume a lot of energy when using refrigerators as well as transporting foods from other countries that can be consumed in various places because of refrigeration (e.g. fruits)
+ More demand for meat as now can keep it longer --> higher contribution to damage to our earth

Executive Summary
- Discussion of what is to be discussed
- Define the refrigeration process
+ Process of cooling a space/substance below environmental temperature
- Explain the difference between the appliance refrigerator and the process of refrigeration
- As a whole, must say that the refrigerator has impacted our world in a beneficial way but in the future we don't know what kinds of affects long term use will have on our environment (and if it's logical to continue using fridges)

Background/Introduction
- Discuss Fridges and how they are many different types
- Discuss refrigeration as well -
-> use in supermarkets, trucks, etc...
+ Emphasize that we see it everywhere and that it is used in our everyday lives
- Reiterate the definition and give parameters for the paper
- First fridge officially introduced in 1850 but name give in 1803

Historical Perspective
- Prior to the introduction of the fridge we used to use things termed as ice houses
+ Originally invented in Persia
+ They were usually built underground. During the winter months ice/snow would be stored there and it would stay for most of the year.
+ Things like ice cream/sorbet would be made there & foods that required refrigeration would be stored there
- Also, things like milk/butter were often stored inside lakes/wells to keep them cool and ensure they would not melt
- Would often hear complaints of food being destroyed during warm months
+ Soon people learned methods to store food like meat for longer periods of time: salting, spicing, smoking, pickling + drying
+ Result is more work for
people and often less meat because these methods are not as affective as keeping things cool
- Prior to the introduction of refrigeration most supermarkets stored mainly dry foods
+ Meat was hard to come by --> people often had to find other means of getting meat...Common to have things like chickens in one's home
+ Once refrigeration was introduced common to find meat --> made life easier
- Eventually the refrigerator was introduced (the official inventor of the fridge is quite debatable)
+ At first used naturally occurring elements --> ammonia, carbon dioxide, propane & sulphur dioxide
+ Because of safety concern due to these elements being used refrigeration mainly used in big industries
+ "Safety refrigerants" CFC's introduced in 1930's made refrigeration a very popular method of storing food

Current Situation
- A fridge is one of the basic implementations within a household
- All supermarkets h

ave refrigeration that allows meat to be sold for longer periods of time
- Fridges are so easy to come by that we do not have to worry about storage of food anymore...People do not know the ways of storing food from before
- Many different types of fridges & a lot of options for us --> double door, one door, freezer on top, freezer on side, etc...

Future Considerations
- The fear that our refrigeration techniques consume too much energy and contribute to global warming
+ could perhaps go back to the old style of storing?
+ Or create fridges that are full circle as in the energy consumed is returned to the environment
- Possibility of fridges that can read our preferred tastes/foods....Pour our drinks for us, etc...
- An interesting outlook: "The fridge of the future will have a built-in computer and a display, and naturally it will have access to the Internet. The fridge will be complete with a scanner that records every item that is taken in or out of it. That way, the fridge's computer can kee
p track of what is in the fridge and automatically order the things that its owner wants to always have in the fridge.
If the scanner is sufficiently advanced, it can read the sell-by date and warn its owner if something in the fridge has passed its expiry date.
The door of the fridge will feature a display. The display can be used as a regular TV set or as a computer to send e-mails and surf on the Internet.
The display will provide recipes for dishes that can be made from what is in the fridge - and
offer good advise on nutritious and healthy diets. In case of malfunction, the fridge will itself send an e-mail to a repairman, and with a little luck, the repairman will be able to do an on-line test to determine the reason for the malfunction.
In addition, the fridge of the future is ultra effective. New means of insulation and new types of material mean that the fridge will have a very low energy consumption and will be virtually soundless." (http://uk.danfossuniverse.com/page2076.aspx)
- Another interesting idea of the future fridge is a fridge that uses a gel-like storage system to limit energy consumption. The side picture shows an example of this fridge.

Conclusions
- Reiterate what has been discussed
- Highlight that overall affect is positive --> we can now store food for longer
- Emphasis that this technology along with many other appliances are contributing heavily towards global warming
+ results in more consumption as food is easier to store & more meat produced because can store longer (and higher demand)
+ The energy used to run refrigerators
- Possibilities for the future are endless

References
- http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blrefrigerator.htm

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refrigerator

- http://www.history-magazine.com/refrig.html

- http://www.ammonia21.com/files/papers/trends-perspectives-supermarket-refrigeration.pdf

- http://uk.danfossuniverse.com/page2076.aspx

- http://www.furniturefashion.com/2010/10/17/fridge_of_the_future_keeps_food_in_cool_nanorobotic_bio-gel_of_the_future.html

2 comments:

  1. Peer Review from Yun Ting
    Hi,
    I feel that you can perhaps being in some statistics to show how much energy consumption refrigeration has taken and its contribution to global warming?

    Also in the 'current situation', you can probably bring in the efforts that are being undertaken by the various players in the globe such as NGO and many more to reduce the usage of consumption of energy from refrigerators? (campaigns etc...)

    Inventions that came along the way that created refrigerators that are not just energy-saving and at the same time more efficient in keeping food safe and fresh.

    Personally, i think that going back to the old ways of storing will not be possible as revolutionary change would most likely be irreversible? This is just my stand so maybe there could be researches that are currently being undertaken to change the current refrigerator into more energy-saving one than it already iS?

    Future considerations such as invention into a 'solar-run' refrigerator? (This is my own view)

    This is all that i have for you, hope that it helps:)

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  2. Peer Review from Jolene!

    Hi!

    Really love the topic, I think it is a rare topic and it is interesting to know how our fridge came about even though it is taken for granted.

    Well now for my review!

    First for the background, I was thinking rather than talking about the different kind of fridge use, maybe to make it more interesting you can talk about what would life (or food) be without fridges. That will be more impactful on the importance of fridge.

    Historical is okay :) For the current, well probably you have not finish research so understandable! But like what Yun Ting says, some graph or numerical value would be good to show exactly what is the problem with the current fridge in terms of energy consumption. That will be more useful.

    For the future one, I think going back to the old way is a bit extreme because as what I have read from your outline, the old way is a pretty ineffective way of keeping food. Probably there are technologies out there that are able to reduce energy produced by a fridge - rather than merely having more functions in a fridge.

    Other considerations would be running on nuclear energy! That's the topic I'm doing on :)

    Yup so hope my review helps too!

    ReplyDelete