The big chill
Farmer invents cheap cooling device
By JIM GORDON

An organic farmer seeks to grow things efficiently, but as a small business part of that growth ideally involves profits. For Ron Khosla of Huguenot Street farm in New Paltz, the desire to grow profits led him to develop an ingenious device he has patented, which is now available commercially, called the CoolBot.

It is a small electronic “brain” that attaches to an ordinary air conditioner and allows it to serve as the refrigeration unit for a walk-in cooler unit of the type used by restaurants, morticians, florists and of course, small farmers looking to store their freshly picked produce.

A commercial cooling unit in the Hudson Valley area can cost about $4,000 for a medium-sized unit. The CoolBot allows businesses instead to use a standard air conditioner costing perhaps $300, which puts out 15,000 BTUs, the same as a commercial compressor for a walk-in cooler of about 160 square feet. By attaching the CoolBot, which retails at $300, the ordinary air conditioner can be used as the cooling unit for a well insulated room, saving thousands on the initial cost and cutting electricity bills.

Khosla said the CoolBot is actually a “tiny computer,” able to use temperature sensors on the device where it connects to the air conditioner to prevent the build up of ice on the face of the unit. Such a buildup would normally disable and burn out an air conditioner, “Using temperature sensors, we’re turning the compressor on and off to keep that freeze up from happening,” said Khosla, showing off the unit that cools the walk-in refrigerator on the farm he runs with his wife Kate.

Khosla said it was his farming business that sparked his inventive streak and that continues to inspire him. He said he was seeking to avoid paying the cost for a walk-in cooler for the Huguenot Street farm when he made his first crude CoolBot in 2001. “It was homemade. I burned out a lot of air conditioners,” he said.

But he continued tinkering and consulting with knowledgeable friends and decided he could develop a commercially viable and entirely reliable CoolBot for about $6,000. Development actually cost about $80,000 but the payoff is an increasingly valuable cottage industry, with the plastic molding manufactured in China and the parts assembled and shipped from New Paltz.

Sales have been brisk, he said, and the pace of sales is increasing as word spreads about CoolBot, But he cautioned the device is not for everyone. For example, it takes CoolBot longer to cool a space than a conventional compressor unit, so if speed counts, a business person should invest in standard cooling equipment. More details on the device are provided at the Web site www.storeitcold.com.

Inventing is something that Khosla said is driven by his needs. “It all happens because of things I need to make happen on the farm,” he said. For example, Khosla used a small federal grant and converted the farm’s gasoline powered Allis-Chalmers tractor into an electric powered tractor that has more power than the original model. He has posted an informal “instructional manual” on the conversion on the farm Web site, www.Flyingbeet.com.

Khosla is also no stranger to international business. He was hired by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization as an “international organic certification consultant” in 2006 and helped organize small organic farmers in India in a program that is now being used as a model in other countries.

He said he originally sought an American-based company to do the plastic molding needed for CoolBot, but said there is little such manufacturing expertise available domestically and it is priced prohibitively. So he outsourced that aspect to China and reports the Chinese company he is working with is aggressively lobbying him to allow them to fully manufacture the CoolBot.

However, he said, part of the reason he is keeping the project largely in-house is for quality control. Though a simple device, the micro-circuitry is sensitive. “If it’s off by a few microns, it doesn’t work, so we are very strict about quality control,” Khosla said.

Overall, the CoolBot, “is the simplest thing in the world,” Khosla said. “It’s like: Why didn’t someone else think of this?” Khosla said. The answer, he believes, is that small farming is something of a niche market, albeit a growing one, and thus large companies have devoted few resources to modernizing farmer’s tools and equipment.

So, true to his credo of inventing to meet a need, Khosla is now developing what he is calling FreezeBot, a device that would enable small farmers to perform a process called Individual Quick Freeze (IQF). That technique, the sort used by agribusiness giants like Birds Eye, allows for quick safe and nutrient preserving freezing of individual vegetables in a way that makes them commercially viable.

Khosla said like any small farm, the Huguenot Street farm sometimes harvests more than it sells. If such bounty could be frozen with IQF standard quality, but on a small scale, a new revenue source would be available to him and other small farmers. Khosla said he is making headway developing FreezeBot, and would certainly accept financial help from investors.

top of page