Experimental study on the performance of a liquid cooling garment with the application of MEPCMS

• MEPCMS was applied in a liquid cooling garment for space applications.
• Extensive experimental study on the performance of the LCG was conducted.
• LCG was assessed by heat dissipation, temperature control and thermal comfort.
• Proper match of relevant parameters was crucial in enhancing LCG performance.
• 26% enhancement in heat dissipation was achieved by MEPCMS compared to water.

As a novel working fluid, microencapsulated phase change material suspension (MEPCMS) exhibits obvious superiority in both heat transfer and temperature control compared with traditional ones. In this paper, extensive experimental study on the performance of a liquid cooling garment (LCG) with the application of this novel working fluid was conducted for future space applications. The main task for a LCG is to efficiently collect, transport and dissipate the metabolic heat produced from the human body. In the experiment, a thermal manikin was employed to simulate the human body, and the performance of the LCG with MEPCMS as the working fluid was evaluated by a variety of aspects such as heat dissipation, temperature control, pump power consumption and thermal comfort under both steady state and transient conditions. Experimental results show that the inlet temperature, mass flowrate and volume concentration of the MEPCMS are three key parameters affecting the performance of the LCG, which can be enhanced significantly by a proper combination of these parameters. Otherwise, the performance of the LCG will deteriorate or even be worse than that using water as the working fluid. When the inlet temperature, mass flowrate and volume concentration of the MEPCMS were selected as 11 °C, 200 g/min and 20% respectively, the heat dissipation of the LCG was enhanced by up to 26% with no obvious increase of the pump power compared with that using water as the working fluid, the temperature distribution in the human body became more uniform, and the capability of the LCG to adapt large heat load change became stronger. This work helps better understand the performance characteristics and contributes greatly to the design of a LCG with the application of the MEPCMS.