Lv, YXiao, JHuang, YJiang, XZhu, YCoelho, PJ2024-09-262024-09-262021-12-081742-65881742-6596http://hdl.handle.net/10292/18060The enormous amount of heat in fires can push inhalation temperature to ~500 K, which is fatal to the civilians. However, conventional rescue respirators are unable to control the breathing air temperature. In this work, we utilized paraffin/expanded graphite (EG) composites to construct a heat exchanger for breathing air cooling. The material itself can be used as the mechanical support, the heat spreader and the heat absorber at the same time. The composites of 0~35 wt% EG were prepared and characterized. The results showed the paraffin was uniformly absorbed in the porous structures of EG. And the paraffin/EG composite with 25 wt% EG has better performance both in simulation and experiment. The heat exchanger constructed by this composite shows good cooling efficiency by cooling the inlet air from 500 K to a breathable 313 K and sustaining for more than 20 minutes.Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.051 Physical Sciences7 Affordable and Clean Energy0202 Atomic, Molecular, Nuclear, Particle and Plasma Physics0204 Condensed Matter Physics0299 Other Physical Sciences51 Physical sciencesConference ContributionOpenAccess10.1088/1742-6596/2116/1/012094