Anti-Frostidigitation: Heatpipe Gloves

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Anti-Frostidigitation: Heatpipe Gloves

Posted by michael on Thursday January 22, 2004 @07:08AM from the windchill-of-minus-20 dept.

Hettinga writes "A little casemod couture this morning, courtesy of Hongbin Ma, a professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Missouri. He has developed heatpipe-driven gloves which pump therms from your toasty upper arm down to those aforementioned frosty digits. 'Each glove contains five small heat pipes, one for each finger, that are about 14 inches long and 1 mm x 2 mm in the cross section. Each pipe consists of three sections: an evaporating section, which is attached to the upper arm area; an adiabatic section, which is between the finger area and the arm area; and the condensing section, which is attached to the finger area.' Coming soon to a half-pipe near you..."

16 of 324 comments (clear)

Too bad... by bperkins · 2004-01-22 07:10 · Score: 5, Funny

nature didn't provide us with some kind of fluid that automatically circulates throughout our body to distribute warmth and nutrients.
1. Re:Too bad... by CGP314 · 2004-01-22 07:14 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Too bad nature decides to shut it off in the hands when it gets cold.
  
  I can't imagine that little bit of lost heat was the difference between life and death for anyone. But, the fact that we have evolved the feature suggests it was.
  
  --
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2. Re:Too bad... by hiryuu · 2004-01-22 07:22 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  There are those with poor circulation in the extremities whose bodies have some trouble warming hands and feet back up once they've gotten cold. Speaking as one of them, once my feet have gone cold, they stay that way for ages, even after getting into a warm (or even hot) envinronment, changing shoes/socks for warmer/dryer pairs, etc.
  
  --
  Karma: Excellent, but still won't get you laid.
3. Re:Too bad... by sugar+and+acid · 2004-01-22 07:25 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  This is short circuiting nature, basically as we get cold extremities like the hands and fingers have the blood circulation restricted to conserve heat so our core body temp stays high. Fingers are far more robust in surviving cold than say our brains, they are also more expendable, and they also have a larger surface area to mass ratio so are costly to keep at body temperature anyway.
  
  What it really means is that the garment that this is in is less thermally efficient than the same garment without (you will lose heat faster). It maybe handy for delicate work were you need thin gloves and warm hands in a cold environment with the only other real option is an active heating system power by batteries.
4. Re:Too bad... by pla · 2004-01-22 08:01 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  I can't imagine that little bit of lost heat was the difference between life and death for anyone
  
  Let's say you don't have the option of going somewhere warm (ie, inside to a nice toasty fire)... Which do you have a more critical (ie, life-preserving) need for - To keep using your large muscles (legs, upper arms), which serves both the purpose of generating heat and might eventually move you to somewhere warmer; or, manual dexterity, which would only really help if you needed to operate a book of matches (something that didn't exist for 99.99999% of human history)?
  
  Our bodies decrease blood flow to the extremities for precisely that reason. Additionally, assuming the worst, we can live without a few fingers or toes or even an earlobe; Sacrificing them to keep our core body temperature high enough seems like a viable tradeoff under extreme circumstances. The fact that we now have thinsulate and heat-packs and almost always a warm place to go nearby, so having our fingers nice and toasty seems more useful than preventing the small heat loss from them, had no effect on how we evolved.
  
  But, the fact that we have evolved the feature suggests it was.
  
  Although this may seem in direct contradiction to my point above, I mention it only for clarity... Not all inherited traits "evolved" in the natural-selection sense. One of the fundamental ideas behind evolution says that mutations occur essentially at random, and those that increase our odds of reproducing (which dying young does not) get passed on. However, those traits that have no effect whatsoever on our chances of reproducing can also get passed on, just by blind chance. For a trivial example, Alzheimer's disease - It doesn't affect people until they've passed their reproductive prime, so as debilitating as it seems in later life, it doesn't reduce its own chances of remaining in the population.
Inverse overclocking... by vudufixit · 2004-01-22 07:12 · Score: 5, Funny

My fingers stiffen up and I can't type very well in chilly air. I'm rated at 73 WPM at standard room temperature. Imagine the productivity boost with these babies on! At least 5-10 WPM for sure!
Really? by Awptimus+Prime · 2004-01-22 07:12 · Score: 4, Informative

He has developed heatpipe-driven gloves which pump therms from your toasty upper arm down to those aforementioned frosty digits.

If he has 'developed' these gloves, I would like to see a picture of them. It looks like these are just as 'developed' as those night-vision contacts over at Popular Science.
No, didn't RTFA by Hektor_Troy · 2004-01-22 07:14 · Score: 4, Interesting

But a while back Discovery had a mini series about extreme survival, and one of the shows was about artic survival. The main character, so to speak, tried on an electrical vest of sort, which heated his torso. This allowed him to stay in a -40(I think) degree windtunnel with I think 5 mph winds for more than three hours without losing any dexterity in his fingers.

When the guy who supervised the dexterity and mental acuity test took of his gloves, it took less than three minutes for his hands to be freezing cold, while the infrared camera clearly showed that the main characters fingers were still warm.

Seemed fairly conclusive to me, that the trick was keeping the torso heated, as that would prevent the problems, these gloves are supposed to fix.

Besides - if you can have warm dextorous fingers without wearing gloves, I'd go for that any day of the week, as long as I'm not working with objects, that can hurt my hands.

--
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
it can help much more than sports! by Lumpy · 2004-01-22 07:19 · Score: 4, Interesting

my GF is a Raynaud's sufferer and if she get's her hands in anything cold it can stop the circulation in her fingers and feet. causing frostbite even in warmer temperatures like 40degF.

this would make life for a Raynaud's afflicted person much easier on day's like today when it's 6degF outside and expected to be -1 later tonight.

--
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Re:Aerogel by Baron_Yam · 2004-01-22 07:22 · Score: 4, Funny

I can certainly see somebody making a hard suit for central Antarctica lined with Aerogel. Can you imagine? "Bob's lost in that blizzard! We have to find him in less than a month or he'll starve!"
Keep your torso warm by me.at.work · 2004-01-22 07:24 · Score: 5, Insightful

It's actually better to keep your torso warm.
The draining of blood and heat from your hands and feet happens when your core temperature starts dropping. This is done to protect the vital organs, heart, liver etc over the non-vital, hands, feet. If you can keep your core temperature normal you can actually work without gloves even below zero (celsius). This because the body is warm and needn't cut the heatloss from hands or feet.
There was a good documentary on the Discovery channel about the very subject not long ago.
So, while heatpumping gloves seem nice, I'd go with keeping my body warm and be rid of any gloves hindering my hands.

Yeah, bring on the puns..
Keep those hands down by OmniGeek · 2004-01-22 07:25 · Score: 4, Informative

Nope. Heatpipes use a fluid and working pressure such that the fluid is almost-boiling at the optimum operating temperature. Heat one end, and the fluid boils, vapor diffuses rapidly to the other end, condenses giving up heat of vaporization, and is absorbed into the wick that runs through the pipe. It then goes back to the other end by capillary action.

That said, it IS more efficient if the bottom end is the "hot" end, 'cause the rising warm fluid vapor and the down-flowing condensed fluid are both assisted by gravity. However, gravity is NOT an essential part of the process (some satellite instruments use heatpipes to keep-em cool in free-fall, for example).

A friend of mine does heat pipes as a business: koolpipes.com

--

"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
It's a passive system by HoldenCaulfield · 2004-01-22 08:00 · Score: 4, Informative

A lot of readers seem to be missing the point here. The real advantage of this prototype is that it's passive - no batteries, no chemical reactions, nothing. It keeps your fingers warmer by absorbing some heat from your body (that would eventually have ended up in the air) and transferring the heat to your fingertips.

So yes, hand warmers are cheap and effective, but they'll die after a few hours once the reaction finishes.

Keeping your core temp high is a nice idea, but let's say you already have a nice coat and things - I think having some gloves that would passively heat my fingers would be nicely appreciated. Their was a post about how if it's a matter of life-or-death, you should maintain your core temp, but I think the more realistic application of these gloves would be to maintain comfort of your digits when you know you're going to be outside.

Again, the system is passive - no batteries, no chemical reactions, nothing at all. You'd put them on and forget about it.
Cayenne Pepper by Colymbosathon+ecplec · 2004-01-22 08:42 · Score: 4, Interesting

I've lived in Alaska since I was just a pup, and one of the first things I learned from an old-timer was the use of cayenne pepper. I sprinkled it on my toes, and put it into capsules I bought at the 'health food store'. I won't get into how it works to increase blood flow, but it does the trick. Having been exposed to wind chills in excess of -150 below zero, I still have all my fingers and toes, although one time the plastic thingy came off my glasses and the steel from the frame froze a hole into the side of my nose. Unlike black pepper, cayenne is not an irritant, although if you get some on a sensitive area (like if you forget to wash your hands before you pee), you'll be wondering WTF?
Alaska Bugs Sweat Gold Nuggets
Re:Furthermore ... by Cheeko · 2004-01-22 09:32 · Score: 4, Insightful

I think this is a problem of human evolution versus current technology. Currently a person can buy a coat to keep their core nice and toasty, but extremeties (hands, feet, ears) are much more sucessptible to the elements. In this case the device is pulling heat away from an area that is easily insulated, to heat an area that is difficult to insulate.

Additionally this could be very handy for jobs that require people to be outdoors, yet use their hands. In the recent cold spell here in New England, I felt terrible for the toll collectors, construction workers, and police who could bundle up, but still couldn't wear heavy heavy gloves since they needed to use their hands. This technology would allow for a very light weight set of gloves that would allow mobility of the hands, while insulating the rest of the body as mush as needed.
Re:Furthermore ... by mangu · 2004-01-22 09:58 · Score: 5, Interesting

These gloves work by shifting some of the heat from more core parts of your body to your extremities.

Alcohol has the same effect. It dilates the blood vessels in your skin, making you feel warmer at the cost of increased heat loss. That, coupled with a general loss of sensibility and reasoning, causes many deaths in places where the temperature falls below freezing.