The hotter it gets, the cooler you are. NewScientist (14 October 2017) reports on a new house paint:
The paint the team came up with has an outer layer that filters out some of the sun’s rays and an inner one that absorbs heat and emits higher-frequency light, cooling itself below the ambient temperature.
The material has passed tests in the lab. “Heat could be absorbed and re-emitted as light,” Shenhav says. “As long as the sun is shining on it, it would be continuously cooled.” Simulations show that a room on the top floor of a house will feel up to 10°C cooler with the paint applied to the roof than without it. The team now plans to conduct pilot tests on buildings within two years.
Although existing cooling paints are used to scatter and reduce the amount of heat buildings absorb, they can’t actively lower the temperature inside. SolCold’s paint can, says Eran Zahavy at the Israel Institute of Biological Research. But it isn’t cheap, costing about $300 to coat 100 square metres. Shenhav and his team think the early adopters will be shopping malls and stadiums.
A fascinating material. I’m not sure a mass consumer product is the proper venue for a material which may still require analysis as to its negative effects on the environment – for example, what does it decay into?
But the odd things you can do with materials these days!
