Personal Cooling Units Work to Reduce HeatSeptember 08, 2009

 

cooling vests

The U.S. Army announced it is exploring ways to help keep soldiers cool in the desert as the number of heat-related problems continues to rise in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The service is looking at two technologies that aim to cool individual soldiers. One of the cooling units is a micro-climate system made of two small modules connected by a short hose. The other, a personal micro-climate cooling system, is a single cylindrical unit.

The Army began collecting data from 18 soldiers at its Fort Benning Maneuver Battle Lab in Georgia to evaluate the devices. Each unit weighs about four pounds and runs on standard military batteries, generating 120 watts of cooling, according to Walter Teal, a chemical engineer from the Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center in Massachusetts. The lab has been working on making the devices smaller and lighter because the goal is to cool soldiers while not adding too much additional weight to their already heavy loads.

"These are not necessarily going to make you feel comfortable. You're still going to be hot and sweaty," Teal said. “But it's enough cooling in most situations to prevent you from becoming a heat casualty."

There are between 1,500 to 2,000 cases of heat-related incidents each year, according to the Army. In 2005, nearly 1,500 soldiers were treated for heat exhaustion. There were 258 cases of heat stroke and six deaths because of heat exposure, according to the Army Office of the Surgeon General.

"That's just the medical cases. It doesn't count every time a soldier had to take a break in the shade and rehydrate," said Teal. "We suspect there are a lot more heat incidents that interfere with the operations tempo, and we think the numbers will go way down if they have some cooling options."

The cooling units can be mounted to any Modular Lightweight Load-carrying Equipment area on the soldiers' body armor or rucksacks. Army engineers are also putting tubing on combat shirts. The systems chill water and pump it through the tubing on the shirts. The experiments will determine how durable and mobile the systems prove to be. The army has been developing the systems for about seven years, working on making them lighter and quieter while extending battery life.

But more tweaking is needed.

"The tubing is a little bulky and it's a little unreliable," said Spc. Isaiah Ramirez. "Half the soldiers said they were having issues with the equipment."

(Vince Little, The Bayonet) Sgt. Matthew Mergele of Company A, 1st Battalion, 29th Infantry Regiment, crawls through a window Monday at McKenna's urban assault course during the Maneuver Battle Lab's evaluation of micro-climate cooling options.