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Blood separation by centrifugation is unavailable wherever electric power is absent. This design study specifies a hand-cranked centrifuge from rotor physics: a skeleton cross-arm rotor (130 mm outer radius, 24 capillary tubes) driven at 8,000 rpm through 100:1 compound gearing at 80 rpm crank cadence delivers 6,797 g at the tube midpoint, with a computed hematocrit separation in 8.8 min (9 min specified) and a malaria concentration spin of 11 min, at 11.3 W steady cranking power against a 20 W sustained human budget. A Stokes sedimentation model with hindered-settling and shape corrections is calibrated against the standard 12,000 g, 5 min bench protocol. Throughput is 48 patients per hour in duplicate; parts cost is USD 38.00 against USD 0.20 for the published paper-based whirligig centrifuge, which reaches higher peak force but processes one patient per run. Platelet-poor plasma and quantitative buffy-coat work are shown to lie outside the hand-drive envelope. Design study: simulated, not measured.
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William Alexander Aldred (2026) studied this question.
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