Study on brick evaporative cooler for vegetables: An eco-friendly storage facility for vegetable vendors

Vegetable vendors are those who buy vegetables from farmers, middle men, wholesale vendors and from farmers market to sell them to the general public. Vegetable vending is a unskilled labor as it does not require any special training or education to take it up. But the profitability is very less because of the perishability of the vegetables. Vegetables lose weight when exposed to sun and it has to be in humid condition to retain its natural weight. Being a business, which needs a lot of mobility it is easy for the vegetables to lose its freshness. A vegetable loses its value from harvest, storage, grading, transport, packaging and distribution. Due to the perishable nature of the vegetables 20% to 40% of the harvest goes to waste. The modern refrigerating technology used for the storage of vegetables is expensive to buy and run. But the need for a low-cost refrigerating storage system is a pressing need for the vegetable vendors. Humidity and temperature play a dominant role in the storage of vegetables. Thus, a survey was conducted among the vegetable vendors to know about the eco-friendly low-cost brick evaporative cooler which does not require any external power supply is a practical, affordable, effective and a brilliant model for today's need. The novelty in this research is to know the usefulness and the practical difficulty in it to bring into action.