TITLE:
Towards Optimizing a Personal Cooling Garment for Hot and Humid Deep Mining Conditions
AUTHORS:
Chady Al Sayed, Ludwig Vinches, Stéphane Hallé
KEYWORDS:
Personal Cooling Garment, Heat Stress, Thermal Efficiency, Deep Mines
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Optimization,
Vol.5 No.1,
March
11,
2016
ABSTRACT: Workers exposed to hot and humid conditions suffer
from heat stress that affects their concentration and can potentially lead to
an increase in workplace accidents. To minimize heat stress, protective
equipment may be worn, such as personal cooling garments. This paper presents
and discusses the performances, advantages and disadvantages of existing
personal cooling garments, namely air-cooled, liquid-cooled, phase change,
hybrid, gas expansion and vacuum desiccant cooling garments, and a
thermoelectric cooling technology. The main objective is to identify the
cooling technique that would be most suitable for deep mining workers. It
appears that no cooling technology currently on the market is perfectly
compatible with this type of mining environment. However, combining two or more
cooling technologies into a single hybrid system could be the solution to an
optimized cooling garment for deep mines.