Performance Optimization of a Thermoelectric-Water Hybrid Cooling Garment

Abstract

Personal cooling garment can effectively prevent human from heat injury and realize global energy saving. However, it is hard to optimize the system with simultaneously realize thermal comfort and high coefficient of performance. To overcome this challenge, a thermoelectric-water hybrid cooling garment is designed. The key performance indicators of personal cooling garments and experimentally demonstrate the necessity of hybridizing thermoelectric cooler with the employed water cooling garment is first analyzed. Correspondingly, the influence of inlet temperature and volume flow rate are studied and optimized step by step. Finally, under the optimized inlet temperature of 24 °C and the volume flow rate of 5 L h−1, employing water as the cooling media, a coefficient of performance of 1.31 can be approached at the working time ranging from 10 to 60 min. This study demonstrates that the thermoelectric-water hybrid cooling garment technology can realize an effective cooling with simultaneously high coefficient of performance and maintain thermal comfort.