Wearable cooling and dehumidifying system for personal protective equipment (PPE)

Abstract

While PPE prevents the health care personnel from exposing to the harmful surroundings, it creates a barrier to the dissipation of body heat and perspiration, leading to severe heat stress during prolonged exposure. Here, we report a lightweight wearable cooling and dehumidifying system capable of extracting 51.7 W heat and 26.3 g/hour moisture within protective coverall without compromising the protection. The system could continuously operate for 6 h without taking off the PPE. Compared with the available commercial cooling garments with different cooling methods, the system could provide about 3.2 ∼ 5.0 times mean cooling power per unit weight in a prolonged working condition. In a simulated hospital environment, the optimum cooling effect was equivalent to 3.5 °C drop in ambient temperature and 6 % decrease in ambient relative humidity. It will not only enhance user’s comfort and performance but potentially reduce the heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) energy consumption by 12 % ∼ 30 % in building environments.