This new super-white paint can cool buildings


Summer! It’s a great time but a warm time! Indeed, most people will argue that you cannot survive the summer without some good air conditioning. But what if your buildings or cars never get hot?

Engineers at Purdue University have created a white paint that can keep all surfaces cool – especially, until 18 degrees Fahrenheit (-7.778 C) colder than their surroundings. Moreover, “super-white” reflects the paint 95.5% sunlight And effectively transmits infrared heat.

Related: This new ‘solar paint’ turns anything inside a hydrogen energy generator

Works almost like a refrigerator without consuming any power

“It’s very unfavorable for the surface of direct sunlight to be colder than the temperature of that area of ​​your local meteorological station, but we’ve shown this to be possible,” said Xuulin Ruane, a Purdue professor of mechanical engineering.

The paint absorbs almost any solar absorber and works by sending heat from where it is used. It can also help in reversing the weather by sending heat from Earth to Earth deep space where it can no longer affect our planet.

“We’re not moving heat from the surface to the atmosphere. We’re dumping it into the universe, which is an infinite heat sink,” said Jiang Liu, a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The project is a Ph.D. Student in Ruan’s lab.

Experiments proved its effectiveness

To prove the effectiveness of their new product, Purdue researchers took infrared camera images of their paint compared to regular white paint in roof experiments. The results were impressively low.

New 'super-white' paint can cool buildings and cars
An infrared camera image showing white radiative cooling paint (Cool) developed by researchers next to professional white paint. Source: Purdue University Image / Joseph Peoples

“Infrared CFM gives you a temperature reading, like a thermometer to determine if someone has a fever. These readings confirm that our paint has a lower temperature than both its surroundings and commercial equivalents.

You can see the experiment below with a detailed explanation:

Experiments have shown that Purdue’s novel paint can maintain lower temperatures under direct sunlight and reflect more ultraviolet rays. Now, imagine that this paint is used on all buildings and roads in all our cities. Wouldn’t that be a creative way to fight global warming?

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