A new type of white ink can be the key to cooling the houses in the humid climates. This paint, developed specifically for “sweating”, is an alternative to the air conditioning and does not compromise the aesthetics of houses.
One of the main challenges of cooling in moist zones is that water vapor in the air retains heat. This means that air conditioning systems within buildings face both the sensitive heat of the region (temperature) and the latent heat (moisture) of air.
Is precisely to solve these problems, which was invented “Ink that sweats”.
As it remembers, there are already paints with radiative cooling properties that remove heat from the surfaces and solar reflective paints that reflect sunlight to cool the buildings to a certain point.
But the new invention brings a cement -based paintwhich combines the radiative cooling, solar reflection and evaporative cooling to get a significantly better cooling.
As researchers explain through a study recently in the Sciencethis paint was developed to have a porous structure, so that it can retain water and slowly release it, Like the way our body exudes when it is hot.
The team of material scientists tested their mixture by painting three houses in Singapore: one with normal white paint, one with commercial radiative cooling paint and one with the new formula.
Researchers have observed that their ink helped reduce the electricity consumed by housing air conditioning systems by 30-40%. This is due to the evaporative cooling effect as well as the strong reflective cooling: it reflected 88% -92% of sunlight.
Ink can help reduce the high value of 60% of the energy that buildings use to cool their interior spaces, especially in warmer places such as Singapore and the Middle East.
Researchers report that it can also help combat the so -called heat island effect, which affects dense urban areas with buildings and roads that absorb and review heat, causing increased temperatures.
Also, as the New Atlas stresses, the new ink keeps the aesthetics of houses.
After two years of warm and rainy weather, the paints of the first two houses became yellow, while the cement-based paint remained white thanks to the nanoparticles incorporated in the formula to improve reflectivity.
