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Air conditioner ‘in a patch’ provides portable cooling
- rhombocombus 7y agoSo a flexible peltier? I think peltiers are really interesting, they certainly aren't very efficient, but I'm excited that innovation is happening in that space. Heat pumps without moving parts will always be interesting to me.
- baybal2 7y agoEver checked out electrochemical heat pumps?
- deckar01 7y agoHeat pumps are more efficient than a compressor and are more effective than a radiator. You could power it with a solar panel to get power when you need cooling the most.
- iancmceachern 7y agoA compressor is a heat pump. Peltiers are much much less efficient than compressor driven heat pumps. Its why we don't really use them for much, but use compressor a/c and refrigeration for everything.
- londons_explore 7y agoPeltier units are used where compressors are too large or expensive. For example, those $20 in-car cool boxes.
- ernestipark 7y agohttps://embrlabs.com/ https://embrlabs.com/ has created a watch like device that I think is the same idea.
- 781 7y ago> makes you feel 5°F more comfortable overall. Keyword being "feel", as opposed to "actual"
- fwip 7y agoThat's what matters, right? I don't actually want to change my body temperature by 5 degrees, I'd die.
- jjoonathan 7y agoSure, but if you believe fuzzy marketing claims like this, I've got a bridge to sell you. It'll make you feel like a billionaire.
- 781 7y agoBy your logic, with that little watch thing on your wrist you could spend all day outside in Dubai and not worry about a thing.
- tareqak 7y agoHaving cooling be local as possible is exactly what matters. You might argue that a BedJet is silly, but the idea is similar in spirit [0]. The question is: why heat or cool the part of the air that makes contact with things that don't require it? It requires more energy and has costs like creating additional pollution. I've had random ideas like wearing a wetsuit that regulates the temperature at right at skin-level, so something like this patch is both validation and a marked improvement. [0] https://bedjet.com/ https://bedjet.com/
- russellbeattie 7y agoI read an article [1] years ago about how exercising with a glove that had coolant flowing through it enabled both athletes and regular exercisers to have longer lasting sessions because they could cool down more efficiently. Since then, I've thought that something like a simple strap for the hand which had a copper plate for the palm and a bunch of heat dispersal fins like on a GPU on back of the hand, with some sort of liquid running through it to help pull out the heat would probably help quite a lot to help cool you down while exercising... 1. https://news.stanford.edu/2017/12/27/cooling-glove-helps-athletes-patients/ https://news.stanford.edu/2017/12/27/cooling-glove-helps-ath...
- mcphage 7y agoI still think about this article. I was hoping to see some affordable product to come out of it, but haven't seen anything yet. Although... 2017? Hmm. I thought I remembered reading about it 5-10 years ago. Maybe an earlier step in the research?
- wallacrw 7y agoFrom 2002: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/2354135.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/2354135.stm Referenced here: https://slate.com/technology/2012/09/avacore-technologies-magic-cooling-glove-from-stanford-wont-transform-your-workout.html https://slate.com/technology/2012/09/avacore-technologies-ma...
- russellbeattie 7y agoOh, yeah. they've been working on it for years [1]. You're probably thinking about the same articles I am, from 2012 when all the blogs picked it up as "better than steroids" [2]. I'm with you - I thought they'd have a consumer product out by now. Also, there's some debate about whether this actually works, but I did some personal testing years ago when I had access to a treadmill and was able to jog longer with my hand cooled. 1. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/10/041006085310.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/10/041006085310.h... 2. https://gizmodo.com/stanford-is-building-a-body-cooling-glove-that-might-wo-5939295 https://gizmodo.com/stanford-is-building-a-body-cooling-glov...
- Aaronstotle 7y agoBeing a large fan of the Dune novels, I'm looking forward to the day a manufacturer creates a real world Stillsuit
- duxup 7y agoIt would take me a while to get used to carrying my urine and feces around...
- inflatableDodo 7y agoI'm not looking forward to them being necessary, but given the news that bits of the world may move past unaugmented survivability, due to wet bulb temp, I have been giving some thought to the cheapest version. So far I have been looking at a solar panelled conical hat, similar to the traditional chinese farmer hats, with a curtain of layers of mosquito net. The layers are seperated and cotain a water condenser that feeds to a storage tube at the bottom that also acts as a weight and a cool environment is kept within the circle under the hat by the air being blown through the condenser.
- mLuby 7y agoIf you had the cone made of slightly rotated PV strips within a stationary brim and rotated them like a propeller hat you could do convention cooling in an incredibly stylish piece of headgear. X~D
- CrispyBaby 7y agoAnyone have advice on staying cool at night? Now that it’s getting warmer I’m having a hard time sleeping at night. I don’t want to just turn the air down really low since others in my house wouldn’t like it. I don’t want to run a fan all night either. This tech doesn’t really seem to be there yet
- shados 7y agoAn evaporative cooler (a "swamp cooler") can help get you a few more degrees cooler if that's all you need. Im also pretty fond of Purple products (their original pillow and any of their mattresses) as they don't get much warmer when you use them.
- falcolas 7y agoSwamp coolers are effective in dryer environments, if the relative humidity is close to 100%, you won't get any benefits. Also, they raise the humidity, which in itself has many drawbacks. A simple fan can be remarkably effective.
- shados 7y agoFor sure. They didnt say anything about humidity and specifically didnt want to run the fan all night, so... /shrugs. Options!
- jimmaswell 7y agoI'd get a window AC unit.
- itronitron 7y agoa large glass of ice cold water and a quiet oscillating fan at the opposite end of the room
- arkades 7y agoIn my experience I’ve had great results using a buckwheat pillow: it warms very slowly, and the opposite side is pretty much always cool. After a lot of searching for the filling with least/no pesticides and the like sprayed on the buckwheat hulls, I ended up going with L-Oma.com and have been very satisfied.
- Skunkleton 7y agoWhat is the SWAP for this device? Not so interesting if it requires a large battery.
- tristor 7y agoInteresting, this is a similar idea to whats been used in motorsports for driver cooling systems for a long time. I just got in my new setup from Chillout Systems [1] this week. Since I live in Texas, even many of the club racers like myself invest in these types of systems since it's so hot here during the Summer. [1]: https://www.chilloutsystems.com/ https://www.chilloutsystems.com/
- lowestprimate 7y agoWe use to race here in CO (which gets hot but not as hot as Texas admittedly) by dipping our Nomex suits in ice water and racing with ice bags in the suit that leaked so two cooling mechanisms in action. Works for 45 mins. It was great to get out with a completely dry suit after a race. Nothing like cool balls during the race.
- applecrazy 7y agoInteresting. If I understand correctly, this is like a "fridge" for your body, where the actual box itself is a heat exchanger?
- DenisM 7y agoI have embraced a large wet bandana on my forehead / neck / arm / etc. Evaporative cooling for the price of $5 (and the effort of carrying around a bottle of water). Dunno about 10C reduction, but it makes a lot of difference. It also made me question the wisdom of having spent the prior years in unnecessary suffering.
- defertoreptar 7y agoUnfortunately that won't work for everyone. There are some places, where 90% humidity is a regular occurrence.
- DenisM 7y agoGood point, I was thinking mostly about Las Vegas when I typed that (have to go there every year mid summer). Well then, another contribution: a few years ago I have found that several months of strenuous cargo exercise made me not care about heat, even the wet heat. I would still sweat and all, but it wouldn't be nearly as bothersome as it was earlier.
- Causality1 7y agoThe appropriateness of being a sweaty mess makes a big difference. Having a big sweat circle on the back of your shirt in an office is more uncomfortable than being soaked to the bone in your own back yard.
- rkagerer 7y agoIs it basically just a Peltier cooler? I thought those things had terrible efficiency?
- klodolph 7y agoYes, but you make up for the efficiency by cooling a single person, rather than an entire room. At least, that is what it looks like.
- modzu 7y agoyes, i think what is novel is that they made it flexible and maybe that improves the efficiency
- Piezoid 7y agoHaving a very large distributed surface area could be key to drive the peltier cells at low current and get back some efficiency. The thermal contact with the body also helps by reducing the temperature gradient against the charges flow.
- mhb 7y agoYes. It doesn't mention the size of the battery or how hot you get from lugging it around.
- m463 7y agoI remember reading an article years ago (wired?) where someone developed a system to maintain a good body temperature in hot or cold. I think the end result was a boot that lowered the pressure of the foot, then circulated warm water against it. The person could stay in 32F water indefinitely. But the article also talked about core body temperature and exercise. High core temperature was a limit on endurance. With a device to keep your core body temperature even, you could basically exercise at high levels for long periods of time. I don't know why batman doesn't have something like this on his utility belt, especially when he runs around in heavy black clothing on hot sunny days.
- spullara 7y agoWhat makes you think he doesn't have this? Iron Man probably has one too.
- koube 7y agoI remember seeing articles about a glove version if anyone's interested: https://news.stanford.edu/2017/12/27/cooling-glove-helps-athletes-patients/ https://news.stanford.edu/2017/12/27/cooling-glove-helps-ath...
- L_226 7y agoOne of the first things I do post training is stick both my wrists/hands under cold running water. Works great
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- XMPPwocky 7y agoSo, water cooling for people. > High core temperature was a limit on endurance. With a device to keep your core body temperature even, you could basically exercise at high levels for long periods of time. Using this cross-disciplinary analysis- clearly, people have bad TIM between the heat-generating components and the IHS (skin). The solution, then, is to either replace folks' visceral fat and so on with liquid metal, or to remove the skin and fat entirely and cool the important parts directly. Okay, so the comparison might not quite be one-to-one, but...
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- londons_explore 7y agoI expected more from Nature. The core of this device is a Peltier heat pump. I'm sure it's great for keeping cool in the summer, but there is no way they'll ever work out for cooling buildings. They're fundamentally inefficient due to needing to be built of materials that conduct heat in one direction and insulate in another, while simultaneously conducting electricity and having a large bandgap. Such materials have not been found and are unlikely to exist. Anyone technical proofing the article should have been aware of that, and should not have allowed such claims to get into the article. Single phase gas turbine refrigeration can theoretically get to the Carnot efficiency limit, and in reality gets close to it.
- aiyodev 7y agoYou misread the article. They want to save energy by cooling the individual, not the room. > The use of such devices could reduce the demand for energy to power central air conditioning by 20% in typical buildings, and enhance a wearer’s comfort outdoors, the authors say.
- krzat 7y agoIt takes a lot of energy to heat/cool stuff. How much cooling could such battery powered device provide? Is it even better than a cheap usb fan?