U.S. Army Testing Personal Cooling Suits

DJ BenBen writes to tell us that they Army is currently testing some 500 liquid cooled vests with Humvee crews in Iraq. From the article: "The Humvees with add-on armor were fitted with air conditioners after TARDEC engineers in Warren, Mich., were given the requirement to figure out how Soldiers in armored vehicles could be kept cool under the desert sun. Some of the same engineers had designed the add-on armor kits for the M-998 and M-1025 Humvees in theater. But with the extra armor and doors closed, temperatures inside the vehicles could reportedly reach more than 130 degrees. 'It's like putting somebody in a toaster oven on low heat,' said Charlie Bussee, an engineer at TARDEC."

Comments

Whoop de doo

[drinkypoo]

This system has been used even in amateur racing for literally decades. It's called a "coolsuit" and they are neither particularly novel nor expensive. However, I would assume that this system costs a hojillion-billion dollars, because it was "developed" for the military.

Civilian racing versions usually feature a small pump inside of a water reservoir in an ice cooler. The pump runs off the car's 12VDC system. The rest of the cooler is filled with ice, to keep the water cold.

You can get one right here for $320 (for a limited time.) Perhaps the military should just buy them from those guys, if they can come up with 40,000 of them or so :)

São Paulo summer

[Mark_in_Brazil]

I live in São Paulo. In the summer, when it isn't raining (and sometimes even when it is raining) it gets frickin' hot. When I didn't have a car (and for the short time when I had a car without air conditioning) and had to visit customers wearing at least "business casual-plus" clothes and sometimes a suit and tie during the summer, my mind naturally turned to ways to keep myself cool so I wouldn't arrive all sweaty and wrinkled at the customer sites.
I had the idea of a personal cooling unit, with a box (maybe carried in a briefcase) that would cool some liquid (water maybe) and pump it through tubes that I would be wearing to cool strategic regions of my body (major arteries and possibly veins near the skin seemed like good places to have the tubes passing). I had this amazing mental image of me walking down the Avenida Paulista (a famous major avenue in the city) in the blazing sun on the hottest day of the year, wearing a black wool suit and looking cool and comfortable while people around me in shorts, sleeveless shirts and sandals were panting and bathed in sweat.
The technical issues seemed tough to master, especially the question of how I would cool the water (or other liquid). Then it occurred to me that I could just have a reservoir filled with as much ice as it could hold, and then cold water filling the remaining space. A simple battery-operated pump would pump the water through aquarium tubing to the aforementioned strategic points and then back to the reservoir for heat exchange with the ice and cooler water. This version would be able to provide cooling for a much shorter time than the one with a portable refrigeration unit, but one could always refill the reservoir with ice and water, and it would be a lot easier to build and maintain. I would be able to build it from readily available (and inexpensive) components. Not to mention that I wouldn't have the problem of powering a portable refrigeration unit. This one seemed doable, but I ended up buying a car with air conditioning before I got around to making my personal cooling unit, and my interest in actually completing the project waned.

Already done in Israeli tanks(?)

[horacerumpole]

I don't remember where is this originated, but I've heard of research which came up with the conclusion that just cooling the head by 2-3 degrees celsius (4-5 fahrenheit?) helps a lot in letting a person concentrate. I think Israeli tank crews have such head coolers attached to their helmets.

Then again - a tank's crew mission is usually to stay in the tank while a humvee crew might have a need to move around more easely (but maybe just cooling their head will help to decrease the cooling unit size and weight).

Re:Do what all the other invaders did

[Wonko]

Do what they do to deal with the heat. Instead of $5000 air conditioned suits, consider wearing a shawez kameez or other clothing that has been developed by the locals over a thousand years to deal with the climate.

Yeah, because the natives drive around in heavily armored humvees all day long, right? Personally, I know that sitting in a slow moving car, with the windows down, in the Texas sun in the middle of the summer is quite hot. What is it going to be like if you raise the temperature and decrease the ventilation?

I believe they will require some active cooling.