Thermo-voltaic personal cooling/heating device

摘要

A self-contained personal cooling and/or heating device includes a heat dissipating member that fits around a portion of the user's body to be thermally regulated. A Peltier thermo-voltaic module operated with low voltage at relatively low current is thermally coupled to the rear surface of the member, and the rear surface of the module is provided with a large surface area, preferably augmented by a heat sink. A fan directs ambient air onto this rear module surface or heat sink. The device preferably is controlled by a microprocessor that biases the module with a pulse train, samples temperature across the module during an off-portion of the pulse train, and used sampled signals to vary duty cycle and/or amplitude of the voltage across the module to finely control temperature. The device preferably is controlled by a self-contained battery source whose polarity across the module is user-changeable, causing the device to heat or cool the user as desired.