(Purdue University photo/John Underwood)
Researchers from Purdue University developed a paint so white that coating a building with it could reduce or maybe eliminate the necessity for AC (air conditioner) in a building, a press statement reveals. it is so white, in fact, that it’s been awarded a Guinness World Records title for world’s whitest paint.
Back in April, we reported on the Purdue team’s latest white paint formula, which reflects up to 98.1% of light . After testing over 100 different reflective-materials for their paint, they eventually settled on using a particularly high concentration of a compound called barium sulphate , which is usually wont to make photo paper & white cosmetics.
The team also used a good range of various barium sulphate particle sizes in their paint, allowing it to scatter a better range of light-spectrum from the Sun as different sizes scatter different sunlight wavelengths. In podcast episode of “This is Purdue,” Xiulin Ruan, a professor of mechanical-engineering at Purdue said, “when we started this project about 7 years ago, we had saving energy & fighting global climate change in mind.”
A paint ‘more powerful than central AC’
The team developed their paint so on reflect sunlight faraway from buildings. Because paint they developed absorbs less heat from Sun than it emits, it can even cool surface on which it’s coated, reducing the necessity for AC . This is often an excellent step towards helping to scale back the harmful effects of AC on environment, as even commercial reflective paints on the market today typically reflect between 80-90% of sunlight & do not cool surfaces.
The Purdue team claims that covering a roof area of roughly 1,000 square feet (92 square meters) would allow the equivalent cooling power of 10 kilowatts — which, consistent with Xiulin Ruan, is “more powerful than the central air conditioners employed by most houses.”
As global climate change causes a rise in heatwaves the planet over, innovative solutions are required to scale back the added strain on power grid from AC. Another recent example comes from researchers in Singapore whose “cold tubes” calm down indoor spaces via radiative cooling, allowing owners of technology to stay their windows open while their homes are cooled down. The Purdue researchers say that they might make the paint even whiter, but the formula they settled on is that the most commercially viable. The researchers say they partnered with a company & will soon put it on the market.
