From-the-lab: MIT Scientists use “artificial blubber” to create wetsuits twice as warm and half as thick!

Get your suit juiced! The ultimate after-market accessory!

The good news: Our wetsuits are about to take a big leap forward.

The bad: The same 14-year old sass-mouths typically seen only in summer will soon be spraying you in the once-empty dead-of-winter lineup.

Sub-50 degree water sheds the weak like fire does dross off metal. But even with the hooded 5/4, heads ache and calves cramp after not too long. Am I warm or am I numb?

But researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have been spending countless lab hours thinking about how to warm our bodies as we play in the cold.

The United States Department of Defence by way of the Navy Seals approached MIT researchers Michael Strano and Jacopo Boungiorno about producing a wetsuit that would allow the frogmen more time and warmth as they quietly rescue and kill things in frigid waters.

And they did it.

The wetsuits we wear are made from thin layers of a synthetic rubber compound structured with tiny pockets, or pores, of air. The purpose of the air-filled pores is to reduce loss of heat as it travels from the body. Thermal conductivity through air has been the working principle of wetsuits before Jack O’Neill and now we’re all bored of the science lesson.

So, what’s new about Strano and Buongiorno’s work with wetsuits?

The two have figured out a way to replace the air inside neoprene with the heavy inert gases Xenon and Krypton. A normal off-the-hanger wetsuit (or even the ripe one out of your trunk) is put in a keg-sized “autoclave”where air in the suit is replaced by the heavier gas, which is two-to-three times as slow to conduct heat. The whole process takes about twenty hours. When asked about possible damage or decrease to a suit’s longevity or flexibility, Strano says, “For all practical purposes (except thermal) the wetsuit feels the same.” However, he also stated that the gas diffuses out of the wetsuit within a couple of days, so the suit needs to be “recharged” before a second session.

Their process has two practical benefits: First, the wearer of the suit can stay warmer for twice as long. It also means that suits injected with these gases could technically be half as thick.

Strano and Boungiorno have applied for a patent and are currently in talks with several unnamed wetsuit companies. Taking the long view, it’s a trade: they’ll be rich, but we’ll be warm.

Right now, the MIT boys are juicing up my three-mil Billabong and six-mil Hyperflex then vacuum sealing them for use in January.

It’s quite a magic show, and I’m wondering how soon we’ll start tripping over these little machines on the floor of every surf shop outside of the tropics.