Team Thermal Life

04.29.2016

Team Thermal Life

Bridgeport Regional Aquaculture, Science, and Technology
Education Center
60 St Stephens Rd
Bridgeport, CT 06605

Project Overview
As an aquaculture school our students go out into vocations in cold water environments
every year. Commercial fishing is one of the more hazardous occupations that our
graduates pursue, with a fatality rate thirty-nine times higher than the national average.
Between 2000 and 2014, there were approximately 210 fatal falls overboard occurred in
conjunction with an average of six hundred deaths related to hypothermia each year
empowered to aid those in that line of risk. Our mission with the Thermal Life vest is to
halt the spread of hypothermia by warming the core of the body to allow for the wearer to
have a survival time at least an hour longer. Instead of recovering a body, our suit would
now extend the time for a realistic search, and successful rescue for the Coast Guard and
other search and rescue groups. The vest is not to be worn as an alternative to the survival
suits already on the market but are instead to be worn in conjunction with said survival
suits. This added security will give fisherman, and a host of other aquatic professionals who
live on the sea more confidence when going out into dangerous and cold water
environments.

Introduction
The original idea for the Thermal Life is based on cool shirts worn by race car drivers. In
these shirts, cold water is run through tubes that line the shirt, cooling the driver in lieu of
air conditioning. Our version involves a heat-generating reaction inside thicker tubes, which
are far superior at retaining heat without burning the wearer, that line a thin, insulated
vest. We originally tried using a mixture of iron and magnesium filings moving through
water in the tubes. This would have theoretically created an extreme exothermic reaction.
This reaction would have been an oxidation reaction, the same type of chemical reaction
that causes rusting, burning, as well as seemingly organic processes including the change
from carbon into carbon dioxide and the electron transfers involved in the use of glucose
in the human body. The problem with this is that our team could not seem to properly start
the reaction in water, even though magnesium can burn under water. It is probably better
off that we could not use the magnesium, as the element can have some rather explosive
properties.

Project Goals, Objectives, and Deliverables

Our mission with the Thermal Life Vest is to provide professionals in aquatic vocations with
an extra measure of safety when working in in cold and frigid conditions.

Methodology
Our research lead us to look for an exothermic chemical reaction that was safe, fast, and
long lasting. This search eventually lead us to the use of sodium acetate, the sodium salt of
acetic acid often used in heat packs. Sodium acetate trihydrate (C2H9NaO5), at room
temperature, is crystalline in form and these crystals melt at about 136 degrees Fahrenheit
or 58 degrees Celsius, dissolving into the very water that is used to form the crystals.. When
they do melt, the solution becomes supersaturated in the water if the solution is allowed to
slowly cool to room temperature again. After this happens, a nucleation center can be
activated (in the form of clicking a metal disc in the solution) in order to set off the rapidlyspreading crystallization reaction, which generates heat at temperatures above 120
degrees Fahrenheit from the formation of the bonds that make up the crystalline structure
of the sodium acetate trihydrate.

Resources

U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. (2014, October 28).

COMMERCIAL FISHING SAFETY. Retrieved from

http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/fishing/?scrlybrkr
Thompson, D. (2015, February 19). More Americans Dying From
Hypothermia, CDC Says. Retrieved from
https://consumer.healthday.com/environmental-health-information12/environment-health-news-233/more-americans-dying-from-hypothermia-cdcsays-696679.html
How Long Can You Survive In Freezing Water? (2009, January 15). Retrieved
from http://www.witn.com/home/headlines/37639264.html

Team Organizational Structure

Team Leaders- Connor Struyk, Steven Becker

Web Design- Chris Flynn
Empathy Research- Jade Serrano, Sarah Bishop
Blogger- Jade Serrano

 Marketing and Public Relations- Kate DAmato, Jayna Pacelli

Social Media Specialist and Presenter- Braeden Sagehorn
Prototype Design- Jacob McElligott, Jady Perineau, Max Mauro, Brian
DeNicola
Research-Max Mauro, Brian DeNicola, Jody Perineau, Briana Norris