Personal Cooling System

65064 One of the factors that limit the productivity of DOE workers performing decontamination and decommissioning (D&D) work is the heat stress induced by the protective clothing that must be worn. Currently, there are no personal cooling products available that meet all of the needs. The product that comes closest circulates cool water through a tube-lined garment worn by the worker under the protective clothing. However, the cooling is supplied by blocks of ice that are heavy, have limited endurance, and impose significant logistic burdens on the operation. This project will develop a complete cooling system using a previously developed miniature compressor. The ice block and pumping unit would be replaced by the miniature vapor compression system. In Phase I, the requirements for a personal cooling system for the DOE¿s D&D activities were defined; a laboratory breadboard test system was designed, fabricated, and tested; and a packaged prototype unit was designed, assembled, and demonstrated. In Phase II, prototypes will be field tested and evaluated, anti-contamination methods will be designed, and a hermetic compressor housing will be designed. A manufacturability analysis will be conducted to prepare the cooling unit for production in Phase III. Commercial Applications and Other Benefits as described by the awardee: The new cooling system should allow D&D activities to proceed more efficiently, thus reducing cost and time to complete environmental restoration, while improving worker safety. It would have commercial applications wherever heat stress is a problem, including bomb disposal, power plants, mining, steel mills, and firefighting