an example of no success

Shinshu is a day late and a dollar short!!!

Researchers at Shinshu University in Japan have developed a new method of integrating phase change materials (PCMs) within fabrics that could heat and cool the wearer depending on the environment. Occupations in many industries require workers to shift between vastly different temperatures as part of their work. Apart from making their work uncomfortable, such temperature shifts can also cause workers to fall ill. Clothing with PCM functionality could absorb heat in hot conditions and release it when it gets cooler and vice versa. But up to this point, these materials could not adjust to meet practical requirements.

Corresponding author of an article published in ACS Nano, Hideaki Morikawa and his team turned to a method called coaxial electrospinning to spin a nanofiber with a PCM encapsulated at its center, then coupled this PCM-encapsulated material with two other technologies: photoresponsive materials and an electrothermal conductive coating. The photoresponsive material absorbs heat from direct sunlight and the electrothermal coating converts excess heat into electricity. Combining three different technologies expands the range of environments where it potentially can be used. Photo: © Arisha Singh, dreamstime.com

The researchers at Shinshu apparently have no prior knowledge of the fact that pmcs have not worked since day one of their introduction into the textile market.

Pcms are a material formed of paraffin encapsulated in a microscopic bead form. These beads were applied to fabric and originally sold by the Outlast company. Outlast gave me a couple of yards and I used it for a lining in cold weather mittens. I sent a dozen mittens with a dozen nylon lined mittens to a captain in the Alaskan command to have them evaluated. It was in the month of January 1960 if I remember correctly. They used them for a month changing off from soldier to soldier and the end result as was reported to me was that all the soldiers had cold hand wearing the L-A 6 Lamilite gloves with or without the Outlast pcms attached. The temperatures I was told varied from 0 to -20 F.

It is for this reason I stopped producing gloves. Gloves simply put do not keep hands warm.

Shinshu may have developed a new method of applying pcms materials, but the end result will be exactly the same, it will not work.

The paraffin will warm absorbing the heat from the human but that will not reverse the direction it came. If it did it would defy physics. Heat leaves its source and moves to cold.

The researchers at Shinshu are ignorant of physics and history. Outlast has been at it since the year 1990 I believe and their success in proving their microencapsulated product works is nil.

What the Shinshu researchers will do is ultimately learn their products will be equal to the Outlast success or rather lack there of.