This is Tech

From my extensive research (by way of random conversations at parties), there is a huge untapped market for cold pillows. Maybe I have an unusually hot head, but there is something comforting about cold material against my face that makes me relax and drift to sleep.

The problem with some pillows is that they warm up after a time, and loose that soothing effect. The low tech and unacceptable solution is to flip your pillow throughout the night.

I have probably lost most of you, but those that are still reading know what I am talking about.
As someone who is fanatical about technology, it puzzles me that there is no good commercially available solution to this problem. So, in the interest of furthering the art in this area of science, I present my best ideas for cracking this nut:

• Water Circulation. The one attempted solutions to this problem that I have seen is a product called the Chillow. The Chillow is a water-filled plastic insert that goes under your pillowcase. While the Chillow does a better job of staying cool than your typical pillow, the water does eventually warm up and becomes even less comfortable than a plain pillow. The reason the Chillow doesn’t work well is that the water stays in one place. It seems that a system that circulated water out of the Chillow and away from the sleeper’s head to cool off would probably do the trick. Perhaps the combination of a Chillow with a small, quiet aquarium pump, and a coil of metal tubing (or other highly heat conductive material with sufficient surface area) would work. If you have unlimited resources, there are recirculating chillers that could circulate water at the exact temperature you specify.
• Thermo-Electric Cooling. Peltier chips are silicon based components that use electricity to move heat from one side of the chip to the other. They can be used for heating and cooling applications and perhaps could be put in the center of a pillow to draw heat from the top of the pillow. The downside to this approach electricity. Apparently thermo-electric cooling requires a fair amount of power, meaning that you would be sleeping on an electrified pillow. I suppose the same could be said for electric blankets, but I know I would be a little uneasy if I had to plug in my pillow. If any readers know more about Peltier chips and whether they would work for this application, let me know.

• Passive Heat Sink. Heat sinks are commonly used to cool CPU’s and graphics cards in computers. A heat sink is typically a metal device with a large surface area. The high thermal conductivity of the metal and large surface area result in rapid transfer of heat to the surrounding cooler air. What is attractive about this solution is that it involves neither power or water. Also, unlike the options described above, a heat sink solution would not require tubes or wires in or out of the pillow. The trick then is figuring out how to incorporate the fins/surface area needed into the pillow, and away from the sleeper’s face. The sides of the pillow would probably work best for this.Image via Wikipedia

• Woven Metal Pillowcase. This is a simplified variation of the passive heat sink solution. The idea is to simply create a soft woven pillowcase made from a metallic fabric. Like a chain mail pillow, but more comfortable. The goal would be to create a more conductive pillow case that would pull heat out of the head and transfer it into the air around the sleeper.
• Rotating Core. This solution is possibly more complicated than the water circulation pillow. The concept is to develop a pillow that rotates within the pillow case. If the pillow rotated slowly while you sleep the cold side of the pillow would continuously be moved toward your face. You would want a pillow core that would absorb the heat from your face, but not transfer the heat to the other sides of the core. The goal is for the heat to move from your face, to the pillow, and then out to the air as opposed to the rest of the pillow.

So how about it warm-headed brothers and sisters? If you have a solution or can advance the ideas proposed in this post, please let me know in the comments. New ideas are as refreshing as the cold side of the pillow.