Personal thermal management techniques for thermal comfort and building energy saving

Personal thermal management (PTM) technologies, which establish local thermal envelope around human body instead of cooling/heating the entire building space, have great potential for reducing building energy use and satisfying individual's thermal comfort. Traditional PTM technologies include off-body near-range energy transfer systems and on-body wearable devices. Recently, owing to the progress in nanotechnologies and material sciences, novel fibers and textiles with desirable properties (radiation, thermal, wettability, etc .) have been extensively explored. Classifying and analyzing diverse PTM technologies, this work provides an overview on the human body thermoregulatory system, advantages and disadvantages of various technologies, and more importantly, the evaluation criteria of different technologies in terms of their energy saving and thermal comfort improving performances. Currently, PTM technologies have the potential to achieve 15–30% energy saving in buildings. However, further investigations on PTM technologies are needed, such as evaluation of thermal comfort for novel wearable textiles, and development of other performance indices for wearable PTM technologies including washability and permeability. • A comprehensive overview on traditional and recent advanced applications for personal thermal management. • Energy saving and thermal comfort evaluation of personal thermal management systems are discussed. • Advantages and disadvantages of various personal thermal management systems are thoroughly discussed.