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Researchers at Columbia Engineering have invented a high-performance exterior PDRC [passive daytime radiative cooling] polymer coating with nano-to-microscale air voids that acts as a spontaneous air cooler and can be fabricated, dyed, and applied like paint on rooftops, buildings, water tanks, vehicles, even spacecraft -- anything that can be painted. They used a solution-based phase-inversion technique that gives the polymer a porous foam-like structure. The air voids in the porous polymer scatter and reflect sunlight, due to the difference in the refractive index between the air voids and the surrounding polymer. The polymer turns white and thus avoids solar heating, while its intrinsic emittance causes it to efficiently lose heat to the sky.
Journal Reference:
J. Mandal, Y. Fu, A. Overvig, M. Jia, K. Sun, N. Shi, H. Zhou, X. Xiao, N. Yu, Y. Yang. Hierarchically porous polymer coatings for highly efficient passive daytime radiative cooling. Science, 2018; eaat9513 DOI: 10.1126/science.aat9513
The new desert home paint?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by rondon on Friday September 28 2018, @04:03PM (5 children)
I'm probably pretty far on the eco side of your eco to (what is the other side, exactly? polluter?) whatever scale, and I think technologies like this are fantastic as long as they don't become some awful poison as they degrade. Which seems unlikely to be honest.
People can't maintain a decent quality of life in many of the places we live without air conditioning, and we aren't going to change society to live without it, so improving our methods is the only hope for reducing energy expenditure.
By the way, hating a company for polluting and respecting their accomplishments in other areas aren't mutually exclusive thoughts. It just seems that way in our currently polarized society.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday September 28 2018, @08:03PM (2 children)
I'd be more concerned about how much polluting went into creating and applying them if I were you. I'm not a chemist, so it's not something I can speak with authority on but I would be interested in finding out the environmental cost start to finish. If it's greater than the cost of the additional power usage for the lifetime of the home, it makes the opposite of sense to use it. Also, if it uses fossil fuels during creation, that puts environmental activists in a pretty dicey ethical position.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 29 2018, @01:08PM (1 child)
When you abstract away the costs to society, people stop caring. They could use 10 times as much energy and cause a lot more environmental damage producing this stuff than running AC does, and people wouldn't care, because they don't see that. They feel good about "being green".
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday September 29 2018, @01:47PM
Idiots are gonna idiot; nothing you can do about that. The primary goal here is to make sure I'm not in their ranks. The secondary is to get as many others as possible to engage their brains before they form opinions.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Friday September 28 2018, @11:21PM (1 child)
It gets a "3" on the German WGK (water hazard class) scale... ie. the highest - severe.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Friday September 28 2018, @11:23PM
Ref: https://www.chemicalbook.com/ChemicalProductProperty_EN_CB5756823.htm [chemicalbook.com]