Experimental study of a personal cooling system integrated with phase change material

•We proposed novel personal cooling systems enhanced by phase change materials.•Higher thermostat setpoint leads to higher PCS COP and building energy saving.•The system has a cooling cycle of 4.5 h and PCM recharge cycle of 2.4 h.•Recharge time is shortened by 30% as the compressor speed is increased from 2100 to 3100 rpm.•The effect of cooling time is discussed in terms of averaged COP of two cycles. Personal cooling is attracting more attention recently because they focus on conditioning the micro-environment around occupants rather than the entire building space, leading to building energy savings while satisfying thermal comfort. In this study, a novel portable personal cooling system integrated with phase change material (PCM) for active thermal storage was investigated. A PCM embedded in a graphite matrix is integrated into the condenser of the vapor compression cycle while an evaporator provides the localized cooling. The vapor compression cycle is operated in a reverse cycle for the regeneration of PCM. The effects of the thermostat setting, PCM recharge rates, and cooling time on system performance were experimentally studied. Results show that the personal cooling system can provide a cooling capacity of 160 W for 4.5 h, the increase in thermostat setting can lead to higher cooling capacity, and the increase in cooling time leads to fast coefficient of performance degradation in both cycles. Besides, the higher compressor speed is recommended to reduce recharge time and increase the overall coefficient of performance.