Flexible Thermoelectric Active Cooling Garment to Combat Extreme Heat

Abstract

With the increasing frequency, intensity, and duration of extreme heat events due to climate change, heat-related diseases or even mortality have become more prevalent. An efficient personal cooling strategy can mitigate heat stress by regulating the skin temperature within the thermal comfort zone. However, lightweight, wearable, and sustainable cooling garments are unavailable today. Here, the study develops a thermoelectric device (TED)-based cooling garment and demonstrates its effectiveness in active personal cooling. The garment is shown to maintain the skin temperature within its thermal comfort zone in a hot environment of up to 40 °C under mild forced convection conditions (air flow speed of 2.2 m s−1). Furthermore, the study demonstrates a portable cooling system with less than 700 grams of total weight, which includes the TED-based garment, a battery pack, and a temperature controller. The system showed long-term cooling on the skin with varying ambient temperatures from 35 to 40 °C. With the advantages of lightweight, flexible, controllable, and long-term effective cooling, the TED cooling garments described in this work can contribute to enhanced health and comfort in an increasingly hotter climate.