Latest news with #2025EarthPrize
Yahoo
16-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
3 teens invented a salt-powered refrigerator that doesn't need electricity. They're building 200 of them for hospitals to use.
Three teens built a salt-powered fridge to help bring vaccines and medical supplies to rural areas. The invention uses salts that pull heat from their environments when they dissolve in water. They won the 2025 Earth Prize of $12,500 and plan to test 200 units in 120 hospitals. Three teenagers designed a mini refrigerator that cools itself with salt and doesn't require an outlet. They're bringing it to hospitals to help transport medical supplies to rural areas without electricity. Dhruv Chaudhary, Mithran Ladhania, and Mridul Jain live in Indore, India and all have parents working in medical fields. The boys decided to find a salty refrigeration technique after hearing how challenging it was to bring COVID-19 vaccines to rural areas without electricity. Their invention, which they call Thermavault, won them the 2025 Earth Prize on Saturday. The award comes with $12,500, which they plan to use to build 200 of their refrigerators and send them to 120 hospitals for testing. They hope their refrigerator can help transport vaccines, other medicines and supplies, and even transplant organs. "We have been able to keep the vaccines inside the Thermavault for almost 10 to 12 hours," Dr. Pritesh Vyas, an orthopedic surgeon who tested the device at V One hospital in Indore, says in a video on the Thermavault website. With some improvements like a built-in temperature monitor, he added, "it will be definitely helpful, definitely useful in the remote places, the villages." Some salts can have a cooling effect when they're dissolved in water. That's because when those salts dissolve, the charged atoms, or ions, that make them up break apart. That separation requires energy, which the ions pull from the environment, thus cooling the water around them. Chaudhary, Ladhania, and Jain searched the internet, first compiling a list of about 150 salts that might work, then narrowing it down to about 20 that seemed most efficient. They then borrowed a lab at the Indian Institutes of Technology to test those 20, or so. To their disappointment, none of the salts cooled the water enough. They were back to square one. Turns out, they didn't need the internet after all — their school teacher recommended trying two different salts: barium hydroxide octahydrate and ammonium chloride. "While we did scour through the entire internet to find the best salt possible, we kind of just ended up back to our ninth-grade science textbook," Chaudhary said. The trio says they found that ammonium chloride maintained temperatures of around 2 to 6 degrees Celsius (about 35 to 43 degrees Fahrenheit), which is ideal for many vaccines. Adding barium hydroxide octahydrate to the mix produced sub-zero Celsius temperatures, which is ideal for some other vaccines and sometimes for transplant organs. Now they had two different refrigeration options. About three months later, they'd built a prototype and were testing it in local hospitals. The fridge itself is an insulated plastic container with a copper wall lining the inside, where the vaccines or organs would sit. The cooling solution, made by dissolving the salts in water, is poured into a space between the plastic outer wall and the copper inner wall. Cold boxes and coolant packs are already in widespread use for bringing vaccines to rural areas without electricity. Those carriers typically rely on simple ice packs. One advantage of the ammonium chloride solution, the trio of teens says, is it's reusable in the field without electricity. You don't need a freezer to pull ice from. Rather, you can remove the salt water from the box, boil away the water, and collect the salt in its solid form, ready to dissolve in new water and produce its cooling effect all over again. Jain said they're planning to use the prize money to pursue a Performance, Quality and Safety (PQS) certification through the World Health Organization so they can pitch it to Gavi — an international alliance that distributes vaccines. The Earth Prize program also has a volunteer who can help them pursue a patent, according to a spokesperson. The Earth Prize casts across the planet for teens who are working on environmental projects and awards one winner from each world region. Chaudhary, Ladhania, and Jain won the prize for Asia. A global winner will be chosen by public vote, which closes on April 22. Read the original article on Business Insider
CairoScene
14-04-2025
- Science
- CairoScene
Abu Dhabi Students Win USD 12,500 Earth Prize for AI-Powered App
The EcoMind Academy app uses gamified lessons to teach students sustainability and connect them with green initiatives. Apr 14, 2025 A high school team from Ghayathi in Abu Dhabi's Al Dhafra region has won the 2025 Earth Prize for the Middle East with an AI-powered education platform called EcoMind Academy. Developed by Sustainability Heroes - a team made up of schoolgirls Israa Ashraf, Almaha Almansoori, Fatma Hussen, and Jourey Abdullah from Al Reef Private School - the app integrates sustainability into school subjects through gamified challenges, quizzes, and rewards, aiming to make environmental education engaging and actionable for young learners. Organised by the Earth Foundation, the annual Earth Prize recognises student-led innovations in sustainability. This year, EcoMind Academy stood out among 1,300 teams from 138 countries, earning the Middle East regional award and a USD 12,500 prize. The team's app not only encourages eco-conscious habits in the classroom, but also connects students with local environmental businesses and initiatives through workshops, school campaigns, and field activities. The students plan to use the prize to expand the app's reach, enhance its AI features, and launch it across government schools in the UAE. They also hope to introduce EcoMind Academy to other countries in the region, including Saudi Arabia and Oman, contributing to broader environmental awareness across the GCC.
Yahoo
11-04-2025
- General
- Yahoo
A teen won $12,500 for building a playground out of recycled tires. She plans to build 3 more parks across Nigeria.
Amara Nwuneli won a $12,500 Earth Prize for turning a dump into a playground in Nigeria. Nwuneli plans to use the award money to build three more parks. She hopes the green spaces can help clean up trash and combat extreme heat and flooding. A teenager in Nigeria just won an international award for using recycled materials to transform a trash-dumping ground into a park with a playground, and she's not stopping there. On Wednesday, 17-year-old Amara Nwuneli was awarded $12,500 in the 2025 Earth Prize competition, which casts a worldwide net for teenagers working on projects for environmental sustainability. The program provides mentorship and support for teens like Nwuneli to further develop their ideas. Nwuneli said she plans to use the prize money to build three more parks. "I'm excited for the future," she told Business Insider. She wants to create more green spaces and shade in Lagos, a city of 17 million people where less than 3% of the land area is green, according to a 2023 analysis. As cities get hotter across the planet, green space is critical. Trees and vegetation provide shade, which cools the ground, but they also help reflect sunlight away and release moisture. Unlike pavement, green spaces don't absorb much heat, but they do absorb rainwater and help reduce flooding. Parks and greenery are also good for human health. Studies suggest they can help cut pollution exposure, improve mood, and even reduce mortality. Nwuneli became concerned about the climate crisis after floods overwhelmed her home in 2020, displacing her family. She said her parents' spice business was affected too, since the rains washed away crops. As a self-described "theater kid," she wanted to get the story out, so she started recording and sharing videos about the floods. She says her efforts raised 2 million Nigerian Naira (roughly $5,000 in 2020 dollars) to help rebuild two local schools. That was the beginning of the youth NGO she founded, called Preserve Our Roots. They produced a documentary about the climate crisis in Africa in 2023, which you can watch on Youtube. She said the reaction to her documentary made her want to help Nigerians connect more with the environment. "People came to us and was like, but I don't see it in my community. I don't see nature," Nwuneli said. So the group decided to bring the nature home — starting with a small park that wouldn't require a lengthy government approval process. At a site in Ikota, Nigeria, Nwuneli worked with local artisans to procure reclaimed metal and wood, as well as tires that were laying around the area, to build a slide, swings, and climbing wall. The area, which Nwuneli described as a slum, is flood-prone. Indeed, many of the surrounding houses are built on stilts, she said. So, with the help of donations and volunteers, Nwuneli's NGO planted flood-resistant trees around the playground — among 300 trees she says they planted across the wider area. They first homed in on this dump site in November. On March 1, they opened the park for schoolchildren. "I remember when the children were like, 'now something we can actually call beautiful.' It kind of broke my heart," Nwuneli said. In her eyes, though, this is just a pilot park. With the Earth Prize funding, Nwuneli is planning three more parks. They won't be playgrounds like the one that opened in March, she says, but multi-functional community hubs with gardens, greenhouses, and waste collection sites. She's aiming to convert a large landfill in Lagos, pending government approval. For the other two parks, she's targeting the neighboring Nigerian states of Ogun and Oyo, which are also experiencing floods and droughts that will likely get worse as global temperatures rise. "I'm not satisfied. I feel like every community needs this," Nwuneli said. Her ultimate dream, she added, is to have a Central Park in Lagos. The Earth Prize chooses winners for seven world regions. Nwuneli is the winner for Africa. A public vote opens on Saturday to select a global winner. Read the original article on Business Insider
