TECH

How Can "Self-Refresh" Cans Work

Drinking a warm beer can be a bad experience. Hops acids melt away from the light, affecting its taste and making it unpleasant. Likewise, a hot soda may taste excessively sweet and may lose its meaning if it is not taken at the proper temperature.
But what if the person is not near a refrigerator and has no ice to cool the product?
California-based company The Joseph Company, which specializes in technology and food, has just launched a system with which to solve the problem. The company announced the product as "the first can of the world that cools alone."
The Joseph Company claims that it spent two decades developing and perfecting the technology behind the cans - called "MicroCool" - which the beverage industry, in turn, had been trying to create for 70 years.
"Consumers in areas with limited cooling, participants in activities such as camping, fishing or navigation and small traders will understand the impact that self-cooling represents today to society," says the company.
The cans, which are supposed to cool in a minute without using electricity, energy or ice, are still sold only in some stores in Los Angeles, Califórnia.

When rotating a part at the base of the can, the CO2 gas is released and cools the vessel in about 1 1/2 minutes.

Cold 'on demand'

The first product to adopt the new cans was a line of frothy ice coffee. The liquid comes in 250 ml containers that cool when a small part is turned in the base of the container.

This gesture releases carbon dioxide (CO2) from an inner reservoir into the can. It cools the beverage within 75 to 90 seconds, causing its temperature to drop by around 16 ° C.
The system adds a weight of 150 grams to the can, which costs approximately $ 4 - more than twice as much as a can of Coke, for example.
But even if the technology is new, this is not the first attempt to develop it.

In 2012, the same company tried to create these cans for the American multinational PepsiCo. At that time, however, they used a gas called HFC-134a, which caused controversy.
It is a hydrofluorocarbon (which contains hydrogen, fluorine and carbon) refrigerant gas created as an alternative to chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), considered to be the most harmful to the ozone layer in the atmosphere.
However, hydrofluorocarbons persist for longer in the environment and are more active than CO2, being considered very potent greenhouse gases. Mainly the HFC-134a, which is used in automobile air-conditioners.
According to environmentalist Greenpeace, HFC-134a is a gas "promoted by the chemical industry which, if it does not directly damage the ozone layer, has a high influence on global warming."

Therefore, the gas has been replaced by CO2 in the new system, which manufacturers define as "safe for the environment".

bbc.com