It’s a big enough feat to ship much-needed vaccines to rural
areas of the developing world. Finding a way to keep those
vaccines refrigerated in places that have spotty access to
electricity? An even bigger accomplishment. Rogers Feng, a
mechanical engineering student at Northwestern University, has
come up with a way to make the latter issue a bit easier to deal
with. His invention, the Human-Powered Refrigeration System for
Developing Nation Vaccine Field Distribution, was announced this
month as the U.S. winner of the James Dyson Award. Feng
attributes his idea to a friend who heard about the problem of
keeping vaccines refrigerated in developing nations. The friend
didn’t have time to pursue a project, so Feng ran with it. His
creation: a refrigerator that can be charged with a hand crank.
The crank powers a DC generator that in turn juices up a nine-
volt rechargeable lithium ion battery. The battery then powers a
Peltier unit to generate thermoelectric cooling. According to
Feng, there are three big adva