Section 1: Introduction

The forced-air evaporative cooling chamber detailed in these documents is designed for the storage of fruits and vegetables. Cool air is created in these chambers using the principle of evaporative cooling, where water evaporating from a wet pad reduces the temperature and increases the humidity of the air passing through the pad.

This section is the introduction to the open-source design documentation for the forced-air evaporative cooling chamber, developed by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) D-Lab, and led by research engineer and J-WAFS principal investigator (2019-2022) Eric Verploegen.

This section includes:

• Background on the contexts and users that this chamber design is best suited for
• An overview of the chamber design
• A brief description of the other sections and a list of key terms