The team over at ClimateLaunchpad brought Andrea and I over to Cyprus for the epic ClimateLaunchpad Grand Final this year, and we were blown away by the stretching solutions posed by the 105 startups in attendance.
To support the startups that make it into the Grand Final, the ClimateLaunchpad team has assembled an impressive lineup of mentors, trainers and national leaders to help nurture their ideas, creations, and dreams from seed to fruition, which is watered and fed by a groundswell of energy and passion to solve the climate change crisis through these annual ClimateLaunchpad events.
In this Startup Spotlight, I have compiled a few of the startups that we connected with and interviewed over the course of the day and a half long event as a way of sharing the exciting work they are doing and the energy from the event. Considering that it was nearly impossible to even see all of the 105 startups in such a short time, we divided and conquered, running around like crazy people chatting up excited entrepreneurs until the sun went down…and perhaps even a bit longer.
V-Chiller: Climate Friendly Refrigeration
The team at V-Chiller arrived from Hungary, excited to present their innovative concept for revolutionizing refrigeration of all types. The innovation makes use of a vacuum pump and a proprietary new refrigerant that inventor Amir Wasily created to solve a problem that many youngsters run up against — the need to get a beer cold quickly.
To get at the problem, he started playing with the idea of water as the ultimate eco-friendly refrigerant in a vacuum pump refrigeration system but quickly found that it interfered with the operation of the vacuum pump. Several iterations later, he hit on what he and his brother Peter believe is a revolutionary new environmentally-friendly refrigerant that will transform refrigeration as we know it. The specific chemistry behind the new refrigerant is not being shared as the team is currently raising funds to develop a prototype and file patents, but they are confident.
As it stands today, they have developed a proof of concept for a specific use case that gets back to the original reason for the invention — a beverage cooler that can cool a drink down to the ideal temperature in just 60 seconds. Stacking this innovative design on top of the impressive coolant innovation allows for some serious energy savings. Consider all of the electricity wasted keeping beverages at the perfect drinkable temperature around the world. Now imagine if just 2 or 3 beverages of each type were kept cold all the time with the other 20 drinks sitting around at room temperature, waiting to be flash-cooled by a V-Chiller should a slug of customers roll in looking for the same drink.
The team has only built this as its beachhead market for now, and envisions scaling its refrigerant and designs across all refrigeration products including refrigerators, beverage coolers, air conditioners and beyond.
Have a look at my interview with inventor Amir Wasily below, who shared the company pitch several times over on their way to making it into the top 15 finalists. The award for being a top 15 finalist is that they are automatically accepted into the Climate KIC accelerator that promises to help the brothers flesh out their business plan on the way to becoming a full fledged company with a full lineup of products that make use of their cool tech.
For more information about V-Chiller, check out the official V-Chiller page over on the ClimateLaunchpad site.
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