FOSSIL-FUEL-FREE IRRIGATION PROJECT
Join Our Interdisciplinary Team of Global Engineers!
THE PROBLEM: The Climate Resilience Practice of the International Rescue Committee ("IRC") is seeking new ways to cost-effectively power irrigation for farming in Syria and similar locations. Access to irrigation water is critical to farming but has been impacted by climate change, rising fuel prices and other factors. Specifically, this project intends to pump irrigation water from 100 meters underground without using fossil fuels. Diesel fuel is expensive and often hard to obtain in war-torn and disaster-afflicted areas so a technology that doesn't use it could be an attractive alternative to what exists today.
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PROJECT STARTS WITH THE GLOBAL CROWD
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In July 2024, the IRC ran an open-innovation challenge titled "Reducing Fossil Fuel Dependency of Syrian Irrigation Systems." SeaFreight Labs served as Project Advisor for this project. Read the problem statement HERE.
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In only 86 days, the challenge received 69 submissions from 27 different countries. The winning idea below came from an engineer in the Russian Federation. Read the IRC press release HERE, published in June 2025.
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The concept for the winning idea is to focus the sun's rays with a Fresnel lens so that the rays are concentrated on the surface of a large mass of sand. The surface of the sand should heat up to 700 degrees Celsius and this heat will radiate into the entire sand mass, creating a 'sand battery' which stores solar energy as heat. The heat energy is converted to electric energy with a Stirling engine. This engine outputs 12V AC power which can be converted to 220V or 440V to power an irrigation pump.
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During the judging process, the winning solver improved his design as the requirements were better understood. See the updated schematic below.
Stirling Engine
Sand Battery
Heat Insulation
DEVELOPMENT OF THE STIRLING ENGINE STRATEGY​
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A low-cost Stirling engine is critical to meet the solution's economic constraints. In February 2025, the IRC ran a "mini-challenge" to find an appropriate vendor. The winning vendor was Sefton Motors with their "Melvin Engine". Click the schematic of the engine below for an animation of its operation (at 1:56).
PROOF OF CONCEPT STRATEGY AND ENGINEERING FOR CHANGE​​​
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In June 2025, SeaFreight Labs and the winning Solver developed a 2-phase project plan that called for a proof-of-concept to prove out a number of the novel ideas in this winning design. Read the plan HERE.
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During the summer of 2025, SeaFreight Labs partnered with Engineering for Change ("E4C"), a division of ASME, to advance this project. E4C assigned a team of global Project Fellows to work on doing detailed engineering analysis of how to create a Proof-of-Concept of the system. Read their project description HERE.
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In September 2025, the E4C team finished a CAD drawing (in Autodesk Inventor 2026) of the proof-of-concept system. See below and HERE.
What We Need Now - Move the Proof-of-Concept Ahead!
A comparison of the Proof-of-Concept system and the Proposed Final System is HERE.
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The irrigation pump that we need to power is a submersible pump that is pulling water from 100 meters underground and distributing it on wheat fields through a sprinkler system. Specs to the pump are HERE. The pump must be able to run throughout the year including in early January at 6am (when there is no sunlight) for 6 consecutive hours every other day.
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This phase of the project continues work on the Proof-of-Concept system. This includes:
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Solar capture (through the Fresnel lenses),
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Heat retention (in the sand battery),
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Heat transfer (from the sand to the Stirling engine),
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the Stirling engine (for electricity generation),
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Power generation (from the Stirling engine),
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Cooling (to maximize power output),
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Control systems (to measure temperature, power and other key parameters).
The final system capital cost cannot exceed US$7,500 to make it affordable for farmers. The proof-of-concept can cost more than this.
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The project requires experimental work to try out different design ideas for most of the proposed E4C proof-of-concept design. It will also require substantial design work to update or totally revise proposed designs as the results of various experiments are known.
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The end goal of this phase of the project is to design a complete proof-of-concept system by March 2026.
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Please join our team and help us bring this concept into reality!