Mark Megahan
The revolutionary money saving window coating we’ve all been waiting for may be here, thanks to scientists from Kyung Hee University in Seoul. Cooling buildings with conventional air conditioning isn’t very energy efficient. This new material can slash cooling costs by a third.
Transparent window coating
Buildings can be up to 30 percent cooler thanks to a breakthrough transparent window coating. The goal was to lower temperatures inside buildings without using “a single watt of energy.”
A competing group in the U.S. at Purdue University came up with the world’s whitest paint to help accomplish the same goal.
With traditional glass windows, the ultraviolet and infrared light passes through and heats the interior room. the Korean team found a way to prevent that with a “window coating that could block the sun’s ultraviolet and infrared light.”
They also wanted their substance to “radiate heat from the window’s surface at a wavelength that passes through the atmosphere into outer space.” That was the tricky part.
However, the researchers point out, it is really “difficult to design materials that can meet these criteria simultaneously and can also transmit visible light, meaning they don’t interfere with the view.”
According to team leader, Eungkyu Lee, their “transparent radiative cooler” coating leverages “alternating thin layers of silicon dioxide, silicon nitride, aluminum oxide or titanium dioxide on a glass base, topped with a film of polydimethylsiloxane.”
But in which order
The research team had to resort to using machine learning in order to determine the optimum configuration of “type, order and combination of layers.”
When they got the results back they were able to produce “a coating design that, when fabricated, beat the performance of conventionally designed TRCs in addition to one of the best commercial heat-reduction glasses on the market.”
They estimate that their revolutionary new thermal reduction coating “could reduce cooling energy consumption by a whopping 31 per cent, compared with conventional windows,” when installed in hot, dry climates.
One of the best benefits of their new material is that it isn’t limited to building windows. It can “also be applied on car and truck windows to keep vehicles cool.”
Combining the coating on windows with the ultra-white paint developed at Purdue would create even more savings. the new blend of pigment “reflects up to 98.1 per cent of sunlight while sending away infrared heat.”
Comparing that to other paints on the market shows substantial improvement. Currently, the best reflective paint available “only repels between 80 and 90 per cent of sunlight.“
