Thermal Management Technologies in Portable Cooling Vests: Development and Key Applications

With the acceleration of global warming and industrialization, high-temperature environments pose severe challenges to the health and work efficiency of outdoor workers, firefighters, military personnel, and aerospace operators. The traditional heat dissipation method of sweat evaporation is no longer sufficient to provide effective protection in extremely high-temperature and high-humidity environments. Portable cooling vests, as a type of personal protective equipment, are gaining increasing attention. This article describes in detail the development status and key technologies of portable cooling vests and discusses the impact of portable cooling vests on human thermal response, the applicability of liquid cooling technology, phase change materials (PCM), and microchannel heat exchangers, evaluates the application of the vest in terms of heat dissipation efficiency and user comfort, and a reference for the design of future portable cooling vests.