University Of California Research Finds Smart Fabrics For Maintaining A Comfortable Body Temperature

According to the data of the US Department of Energy, 5% of the total electricity generated in the US is used for air conditioners. This is not only reflected in the fact that the US National Grid needs to spend billions of dollars to generate electricity, but also needs to emit hundreds of millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the air every year. In other countries, such as India, the total energy consumption generated by air conditioning is expected to climb by an order of magnitude in the next decade.

Although we can help reduce energy consumption and pollution by developing more energy-efficient air conditioners and building green homes and offices, in the long run, we will try to find a life and work without air conditioners that may have greater influence.

To achieve this ambitious goal, the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA-E) of the Ministry of Energy has been funding several initiatives, including a project called ATTACH (Adaptive Textile Technology and Dynamic Cooling and Heating).

This is a three-year project led by Joseph Wang, a professor of nano engineering at the University of California, San Diego. Its goal is to develop a personalized, wearable heating and cooling technology for office workers, so as to reduce the energy consumption of building HVAC systems (heating, ventilation, air conditioning). Unlike other advanced fabric technologies, ATTACH is designed for outdoor workers (whether in very cold or hot climates), and its design temperature range is 19 ℃ to 26 ℃. Clothing using this technology can help users reduce the use of HVAC in some cases, even without using HVAC.

According to Renkun Chen, a member of the ATTACH team, "the goal of this project is to reach a comfortable skin temperature of 93 degrees Fahrenheit (about 33 degrees Celsius)." The technology being developed is based on adaptive textiles, which will automatically increase or decrease their insulation values (porosity and thickness) when the ambient temperature decreases or increases. Part of the mechanism will be purely passive and will not consume electricity at all. In addition, the team plans to add integrated heating elements and cooling elements, and use printed thermoelectric devices and batteries.

It was also reported that their team was looking for different innovative ways to drive dynamic components. One of them is a flexible biofuel cell, and human sweat is the power source of the fuel cell.

ATTACH is still in the early stage of development, and different teams are responsible for different components. If everything goes according to plan, these components are expected to be integrated into a single wearable textile prototype product within three years, and then we can say goodbye to air conditioning.