Common plastics could passively cool and heat buildings with the seasons | ScienceDaily - 0 views
www.sciencedaily.com/...240627172053.htm
HSR HSR-2025 materials heat climatechange science engineering physics chemistry potential research idea
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Researchers at Princeton and UCLA have developed a passive mechanism to cool buildings in the summer and warm them in the winter.
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coatings engineered from common materials can achieve energy savings and thermal comfort that goes beyond what traditional building envelopes can achieve
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"With the increase in global temperatures, maintaining habitable buildings has become a global challenge,"
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"In recent years there has been massive interest in cool roof coatings that reflect sunlight. But cooling walls and windows is a much more subtle and complex challenge."
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"By coating walls and windows with materials that only radiate or absorb heat in the atmospheric window, we can reduce broadband heat gain from the ground in the summer, and loss in the winter, while maintaining the cooling effect of the sky. We believe that this idea is unprecedented, and beyond what traditional roof and wall envelopes can achieve."
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The findings' impact is significant for two important reasons. First, the researchers show in the article that many common and low-cost building materials radiate heat in the narrowband and block broadband heat. Material such as polyvinyl fluoride, already used as siding material, could be adapted for the purpose, as could even more common plastics.
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"We were really excited when we found that materials like Polypropylene, which we sourced from household plastics, selectively radiate or absorb heat in the atmospheric window." Raman noted. "These materials border on the mundane, but the same scalability that makes them common also means that we could see them thermoregulating buildings in the near future."
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The second reason for optimism is that the potential energy impacts at the building scale are substantial. The researchers noted that seasonal energy savings with their mechanism are comparable to the benefits of painting dark roofs white. This could be useful as air conditioning cost and heat related casualties continue to soar worldwide. Mandal and Raman plan to continue this research further.
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"The mechanism we proposed is completely passive, which makes it a sustainable way to cool and heat buildings with the seasons and yield untapped energy savings."
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Journal Reference: Jyotirmoy Mandal, Jyothis Anand, Sagar Mandal, John Brewer, Arvind Ramachandran, Aaswath P. Raman. Radiative cooling and thermoregulation in the earth’s glow. Cell Reports Physical Science, 2024; 102065 DOI: 10.1016/j.xcrp.2024.102065