Personal thermal management - A review on strategies, progress, and prospects

The upsurge in the demand of energy saving along with diverse personal thermal management prerequisites urge the industry to develop various personal thermoregulation devices. Particularly, the people exposed to harsh/hot environments are especially in need for the portable cooling option to protect themselves. In line with this, lot of effective thermal management strategies with increased wearer's comfort have been developed and tested. This review consolidates various active cooled garments, passive cooled garments, intelligent textiles, and hybrid-cooling garments. The cooling garments based on air cooling, liquid cooling, evaporative cooling (membrane based evaporative cooling and vacuum desiccant cooling), micro fans ventilation, thermoelectric cooling, and vapor compression cycle-based cooling are reviewed in detail. Moreover, cooling garments based on phase change materials (PCMs), shape memory alloys (SMAs), and some hybrid cooling techniques (such as air cooling with PCMs and liquid cooling with PCMs) are discussed. Furthermore, radiative and conductive cooling-based textiles are elaborated in details. The concept of each category is addressed, followed by different developed designs in the literatures along with their associated applications, merits, and downfalls. Finally, an outlook is presented related to the opportunities and challenges.