Valery kiseev’s double loop refrigerator is running on plain old electricity for the summer. But in Russia, explains the ruddy, good- natured physicist, summer is short. Come October, he can thread his capillary-tube-system-with-heat-pump out his laboratory’s basement window and suck in enough cold air to freeze Grandma’s prize turkey without using a watt of electricity. Nature herself thought of this invention, he says.
Kiseev stumbled into the home appliance business by accident. As a physicist at Urals State University, he spent years designing cooling systems for Soviet rockets. By copying aspects of the human circulatory system, Kiseev claims, he hit upon a new way of exchanging heat and cold that uses much less energy than conventional motor-driven pumps. Now, like so many of his colleagues, he is looking to cash in on his country’s newfound access to Western markets. His double-loop fridge for the cold- climate consumer is his first domestic spin-off.
During the glory days of the cold war, Soviet scientists relied on the military for a steady stream of research funds. When the cold war ended, that well ran dry. Russia’s best and brightest have turned instead to capitalism, hawking their wares in the West with an equal mixture of chutzpah and naïveté. Westerners, in kind, have flocked east, hoping to turn a fast buck as iron curtain technology is unveiled at last. So far the yawning gulf between the world of the Russian scientist and the free-market capitalist has kept both parties from their dreams of mutual success, but neither shows signs of abandoning the effort.
