This morning I didn't ride to work on a motorcycle. There are many reasons, but cold is the main one. It's one thing standing about in cold temperatures and quite another sitting quite still holding your hands out in front of you while enduring a 70mph induced -25C wind chill. Now, there are expensive heated solutions to this. They take ages to get into and out of, and largely aren't worth it. Sticking to warmer months is the clever way to go.

In warmer weather, you can slip on some expensive leather safety gear secure in the knowledge that adjusting a zip or two will change the airflow enough to maintain a tolerable temperature. Until it starts getting really hot. It comes as a surprise, but when the temperature hits 37C, instead of wind chill, wind heating occurs. At 42C, you're genuinely baking. The solution is simple: remove the jacket, ride in a t-shirt and let your inbuilt evaporative cooling take care of the problem. Except when you fall off and are subject to robust exfoliation.

So, leather is available in many types and treatments, some that take up water. Take a motorcycle jacket and create a waterproof panel in the back, atop this place the absorbent leather panel then use a small peristaltic or diaphragm pump to force water between them. The water will absorb into the leather and then evaporate from the surface taking significant heat. The rider can control the flow to modulate cooling.

This might also be useful in firefighting/mining/industrial environments.
-- bs0u0155, Nov 27 2018

xkcd: Jacket https://xkcd.com/90/
for [IT] [notexactly, Dec 07 2018]

Surely the solution is simply to wear a nice car?
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Nov 27 2018


This idea is not without merit. However ...

On the interior of the garment, run a mesh of thin-walled capillary pipes, filled with water. This is a closed system; the water is circulated by a small pump. On the back of the garment, have a small backpack, with two inlet scoops positioned over the wearer's shoulders, with a vent at the lower rear. This is the open-circuit part of the system. Water from a small tank is sprayed onto a mat of synthetic fibre through which the piping from the closed-circuit capillaries runs. The forward motion of the rider pushes ambient air of low humidity into the scoops, where it flows over the saturated mat. Evaporative cooling draws heat from the system and the cooled water passes back into the suit; warmer, moist air is exhausted from the rear vent. Additional side-tubes with venturii nozzles could be positioned at the sides to increase airflow.
-- 8th of 7, Nov 28 2018


//This is a closed system; the water is circulated by a small pump.//

If you're going to do that, why not just run a Peltier/heatsink and plug it into the bike?
-- bs0u0155, Nov 28 2018


Why not, indeed ? Then the system can be configured for either heating or cooling as required.
-- 8th of 7, Nov 28 2018


The liquid should be viscous and red, for effect in minor crashes.
-- bs0u0155, Nov 29 2018


With suitable employment of large-bore needles, the unit could be configured to cool the wearer's blood directly, thus removing the need for an additional reservoir.
-- 8th of 7, Nov 29 2018


But a single leak and you have compromised a critical system. Why not take advantage of the blood-air exchanger in the chest or the blood-liquid exchanger in the colon(or gills if you're a fish)?
-- bs0u0155, Dec 07 2018



random, halfbakery