Prizewinners
Varun Kapoor BSc (Hons) GradIED
The Heat Harvester
Varun Kapoor graduated with a first class honours degree in design engineering with professional experience in 2011. His final project, the Heat Harvester, won the IED prize and has a patent pending.
Having lived in India for the first 15 years of my life, power cuts and shortages were a frequent affair. This made me aware of the energy crisis that the world faces at a very young age and more importantly got me thinking how better to utilise different forms of energy.
After moving to England I did my A levels at Brockwood Park, an incredible, international, organic, vegetarian school. Here I developed an interest and a love for nature, our environment ( I have always found it strange that we say “the environment” as if it a singular entity separate from ourselves) and organic farming. Finally, it was while I was WWOOFing ( World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) in Norway that the inspiration for the Heat Harvester came.
The Heat Harvester is a portable device that converts heat from a campfire (and potentially any heat source) to an electric current that can charge any USB powered device. The way it works is by using a uniquely configured Thermo-Electric Generator that converts a temperature gradient across its sides into an electric current. There is now a patent pending on the product and I hope to some day take this product to market. It is now in its prototype stage.
What I have learnt from the whole experience is that good design is simple. Simple does not imply easy.
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