Design and Analysis of an Efficient Vaccine Cold Chain Box

Abstract

Human health is one of the most important concerns for the governments around the world. Global organizations such as WHO (World Health Organization) and PATH (Program for Appropriate Technology in Health) have considerable interest in organizing vaccination programs and its cold chain delivery. The problem predominantly persists in Lower-middle income countries like India where due to inadequate infrastructure and lack of consistent Power supply, significant losses occur in the cold chain. Improvements are required to prevent the loss of costly and precious vaccines during the cold chain. India lacks a reliable power supply and the resulting power cuts interrupt the cold chain, leading to a loss of vaccine potency since they are not within the temperature range of 2–8 °C. This paper studies the current VCB (vaccine carrier box) and cold chain design through the aid of Computer modelling and simulations. Also a novel experimental setup to examine insulation R-value has been devised and studied. Based on this a new design approach is utilized to model a thermoelectric system and early designing is done through the aid of 3-D printing.

A Novel Embedded System Based on Cold Box Design for the Cold Chain

“…Additionally, the vaccine should be placed in a refrigerator as soon as possible at the end of the vaccine transfer process. Some medicines may be frost-resistant, so the storage conditions of the medicines should be checked [9,10]. Figure 2 shows an example for a cold chain box [11].…”