Ransom Riggs
New Fridge Concept is Awesome, Scary
by Ransom Riggs - June 17, 2010 - 7:06 AM

Here’s a “cool” idea for a refrigerator (heh) which actually doesn’t use cooling at all to keep food fresh. Nor does it have a door — or a motor, a compressor, or anything else electrical. The Bio Robot Refrigerator, industrial designer Yuriy Dmitriev’s entry for the Electrolux Design Lab competition, is a reservoir 1/4 the size of a normal fridge that’s filled with a sticky, odorless biopolymer gel that preserves food using luminescence. (When someone explains to me how exactly luminescence can cool food, I’ll update this!)

To store food, you simply press it into the gel, which envelops it and creates a separate capsule for each item. To remove it, simply stick your hand in and pull it out — if you’re brave enough. It does look a bit like either the Blob from The Blob or the alien from Alien‘s flesh-eating mouth-goo.

Via Ecogeek

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Comments (39)

  1. All I can think about is how quickly it will get dirty.

    posted by Nicole on 6-17-2010 at 8:09 am

  2. …and how often my children would stick their hands into it!

    posted by Sadie on 6-17-2010 at 8:26 am

  3. I can just picture big brother shoving little brother’s head into the goo…

    posted by Jill @ Liv'nGood Jewelry on 6-17-2010 at 8:38 am

  4. Yeah, maybe they should add a door just as a cat-hair barrier.

    posted by Elsa on 6-17-2010 at 8:49 am

  5. Before refrigeration, there were several methods for preserving food. They were heating it up really hot and sealing it in air tight containers (canning), salting, and keeping things in cool places like cellars. Two of those have nothing to do with keeping the food “cool” because the purpose of food preservation isn’t to make something cool. The purpose is to slow the growth of bacteria and fungus on your food. If you can do that by means other than refrigeration (luminescence), then it can work just as well. In fact, luminescence probably isn’t any different from salting in terms of what it does. Most bacteria and fungi can’t grow in a highly salty environment and most can’t grow when bathed in certain wavelengths of light.

    posted by M Fryda on 6-17-2010 at 9:15 am

  6. All I can think of is the bio gelpacks from Star Trek Voyager…

    posted by BlueAloe on 6-17-2010 at 9:30 am

  7. Wouldn’t there be a limited amount of times you could squeeg things into it before it stops closing itself up…and how does it taste? Does it affect the taste of the food?

    posted by Helenann on 6-17-2010 at 9:43 am

  8. I would think that rather than preserving food by cooling it, it preserves food by keeping it airtight sort of like a vacuum seal.

    posted by Anna on 6-17-2010 at 9:49 am

  9. It’s like a jello-based salad gone really awry!

    posted by JCopeland on 6-17-2010 at 9:49 am

  10. Does the gel close up again, or do you need to replace it periodically?

    posted by Ali on 6-17-2010 at 9:56 am

  11. Im sorry, Ill be the one to say it, but how long before this becomes an “adult novelty toy” for the pubescent teenage boy in the household?

    posted by Tom on 6-17-2010 at 9:59 am

  12. So what do I do with my leftover rotisserie chicken? Shove the whole thing in goo?

    posted by JJ on 6-17-2010 at 9:59 am

  13. I want one!

    posted by Shine on 6-17-2010 at 10:05 am

  14. What if you have a bowl of fruit salad?

    posted by Stephen on 6-17-2010 at 10:20 am

  15. Did anyone else immediately think of Horrible Gelatinous Blob from Futruama?

    posted by teh wife on 6-17-2010 at 10:24 am

  16. It’s the jello mold from Hell

    posted by tom on 6-17-2010 at 10:24 am

  17. Will it hold the answers to the question of who won the chocolate?

    posted by nikki on 6-17-2010 at 10:26 am

  18. I agree with Sadie, I can just imagine my kids not only sticking each other’s heads in it, but random toys, pencils, etc. Maybe it would be better with a door (that locks!) . . .

    posted by jenny on 6-17-2010 at 10:38 am

  19. What about the stuff that really does need to remain cold? I’ll have to have a separate freezer for my ice cream!

    And I second the cat fur comment. I get enough long malamute hairs in my refrigerator as it is.

    posted by roxy on 6-17-2010 at 11:06 am

  20. Interesting concept.

    posted by ProfessorTom on 6-17-2010 at 11:09 am

  21. Yummay.

    posted by Mark on 6-17-2010 at 11:21 am

  22. What about food that is left in there too long and it gets moldy? Certainly this fridge is not immune from the whoops-I-forgot-about-that-bag-of-grapes-back-there problem that occurs in normal fridges. I’d hate to have to clean the mold from the gel.

    posted by Elizabeth on 6-17-2010 at 11:38 am

  23. I’m reminded of my nephews who found a new use for Mom-mom’s ‘gel’ candles… throwing them at the ceiling to see if they stick! These boys would be tossing blobs of gelatinous goo faster than you could blink!

    posted by Tom on 6-17-2010 at 11:51 am

  24. This kinda reminds me of another open fridge concept idea. Instead of cooling via freon like conventional fridges the idea was that sound at a certain frequency could do it (as I recall). So the thing could be an open frame and yet it could keep the food from going bad. I imagine with this concept you would need to make sure things were in properly sealed bowls and such to avoid a mess. Also the gel would have to be non-toxic in case close proximity to the gel led to cross contamination like if it seeped through the cardboard of a box of eggs or something.

    posted by Charles on 6-17-2010 at 12:35 pm

  25. It states in the text on the picture that the jell is not sticky. I’m guessing this is primarily intended for fruits, vegetables, and breads. They don’t need to be cold, but they do go bad fast. It’s a very cool idea. I could see people who eat a lot of fresh veggies and fruits buying one of these to go along with a smaller normal fridge.

    posted by Kim on 6-17-2010 at 1:44 pm

  26. I have 2 mastiffs, one of whom is just curious enought to stick her head into the goo. I don’t think I’d buy one unless I could be assured it’s pet-proof, kid-proof and non-toxic.

    posted by Peggie on 6-17-2010 at 3:28 pm

  27. Fascinating! I’d get my hair stuck in it within the first five minutes, though.

    (It’s long enough that I try to avoid princes, rappellers, and tall towers. And little boys still in their “Tarzan” phase. And maypole ceremonies.)

    I wonder what would happen if the lid on your soup container was slightly askew . . . ?

    posted by Valkyrie on 6-17-2010 at 3:55 pm

  28. Perhaps it would be safer from the pets, kids, whatever if it was mounted horizontally instead??? Over the counter, with fridge drawers under?

    posted by Laurel on 6-17-2010 at 4:35 pm

  29. @Tom…..LOL, only a guy would think of that!!!!

    posted by Sandie on 6-17-2010 at 4:36 pm

  30. If its flows enough to wrap around your food by itself, wouldn’t it flow enough to spill out onto your kitchen floor after a while?

    AWESOME!

    posted by Joe on 6-17-2010 at 10:56 pm

  31. Luminescence cools food by converting heat energy to light energy. So another downside of this fridge would be the fact that it would have to create light. The idea is theoretically possible, but I’m really not confident existing technology is sufficient to cool foods to safe temperatures.

    Plus, cleaning this thing would be a royal pain.

    posted by LordHedgie on 6-17-2010 at 11:04 pm

  32. What?! Come on! No way! This has to be an assignment or project done by a student in a web design or advertising course. I think a real product like this would be a huge flop. Even if it really did keep food well-sealed and cool it seems to me that having a big box of green Jell-O for a fridge would be impractical and of very limited use.

    posted by dooflotchie on 6-18-2010 at 12:37 am

  33. This has NOTHING to do with reality! It’s from the Electrolux DESIGN competition. This a design “that responded to the 2009 brief to find domestic solutions 90 years in to the future, to celebrate the 90th birthday of Electrolux”

    posted by TimC on 6-18-2010 at 7:34 am

  34. M Fryda is exactly correct – the purpose of refrigeration isn’t to cool your food, but rather slow down the growth of bacteria. This is why you still get food going bad when you put it in the fridge, albeit over a longer amount of time. You slow down that growth even further when you put your food in the freezer, which is why things take even longer to go bad than when placed in the fridge. Luminescence does nothing to cool down the food – it’s used for killing/ inhibiting growth of bacteria, and is already used by hikers to “purify” water : http://www.harvesth2o.com/uv.shtml

    posted by RL on 6-21-2010 at 11:51 am

  35. Cool! My very own Gelatinous Cube!!

    posted by WaitingIsFullness on 6-21-2010 at 12:41 pm

  36. I can just see my roommate and I throwing darts at it.

    posted by M on 6-22-2010 at 4:55 pm

  37. As long as I can stick my kids’ artwork to it, sign me up!!!

    posted by Elizabeth on 6-25-2010 at 1:00 pm

  38. can’t imagine how much filth this thing would pick up after only a few days. nevermind a month, ayear! in my appartment? yech!

    posted by jacqleviking on 6-26-2010 at 11:45 am

  39. Doesn’t seem like it would keep my beer very cold but it is a cool idea but the beer thing is a definate hang up

    posted by adam on 9-5-2010 at 2:18 pm

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