Keeping drinks cold in a fridge can be a waste of energy if the product may not be sold for days. But now there’s a new solution that claims to cool any warm drink within seconds at the time of purchase.
The RapidCool gadget is supposed to cool all kinds of drinks from room temperature to 4C in 45 seconds or less.
So instead of taking an already cooled drink from a fridge, you would take a warm one from a shelf. Placing it into the machine, which uses patented V-Tex technology, you would then watch the drink rotate around creating a Rankine vortex, and receive it back chilled.
Enviro-Cool, the London-based company behind the project, estimates that potential savings on electricity bills could equal €832 a year in place of a fridge left on all the time.
Previous efforts have already been made to achieve rapid drinks cooling on demand but there have been problems in the time it takes to effectively cool the liquid.
The EU has more faith in this one having awarded the project €932,000 for further development in carrying out trials at a supermarket in Holland later this month and eventually releasing it in the third quarter of 2014
Michael Jennings, European Commission spokesman for research, innovation and science, said: "This is a product that will save businesses money, do something for the environment and create jobs. The Commission has pledged to invest even more EU funding in projects that can really make a difference in people’s lives."
