Towards a world with fewer air conditioners?
The whitest paint that has ever been able to block solar radiation and cool the earth
It could make your air conditioner obsolete.
The whitest new paint blocks 98,1% of sunlight and saves up to 10,5 degrees Celsius.
The paint is made with barium sulfate, an additive used in paper and makeup.
The material is mixed with a normal-looking one-coat paint.
Purdue University engineers made the paint, which consists primarily of barium sulfate, a compound used in cosmetics and ultra-white paper products. Barium sulfate is extremely reflective, and that's the key to making everything white: it needs to reflect as much light as possible, rather than absorb it, like the ultra-black Vantablack paint product.
The special thing about this ultra-white paint is that barium sulphate is also included in different particle sizes, which means more unpredictable surface coverage that reflects even more light.
"If you were to use this paint to cover a roof area of about 1 square feet, we estimate you could get 000 kilowatts of cooling power", Purdue Professor Xiulin Ruan said in a statement. "It's more powerful than the central air conditioners used by most homes."
https://www.popularmechanics.com/scienc ... -sunlight/University papers:
https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/release ... ally..htmlhttps://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/release ... dings.htmlAnd what's more, it's not expensive and you could do this kind of paint yourself by using it as an additive in so-called standard coatings:
https://www.mon-droguiste.com/sulfate-baryum.html (3.75 euro/kg)