Therapeutic Equipment for Brain-Hyperthermia Using Convective Spray Cooling

Abstract

A new type of therapeutic equipment is designed herein, using concepts of convective heat transfer and spray cooling, to treat patients suffering from brain-hyperthermia. The equipment is aimed to provide emergency treatment in order to prevent disability or possible mortality because thermoregulatory system of the patients fails to maintain a homeostasis. The equipment uses noncontact method of forced convection, applied uniformly at body exteriors. The heat exchanger is designed to contain four independent pipe-sections with orifice openings around the body. The cool-air, maintained within ASHRAE’s thermal comfort bounds, is sprayed through the orifices. Design improvements have been made on the basis of image analysis of the flow. The boundary layer (BL) analysis has also been performed over a specially designed mannequin with induced hyperthermia characteristics. The testing indicates a decay of ∼6 °C in 280 min with a time constant of 2 h. Comparative to existing techniques, in addition to being a noncontact approach, the equipment shows better thermoregulatory performance along with a flexibility to accommodate different body contours.