Researchers Develop Paint That Could Help Reduce The Earth’s Heating

Image credit – Jared Pike/Purdue University

Apart from a choice of aesthetics, there are reasons why certain colors are preferred when it comes to certain things. For example, when choosing curtains to block out the sun, people tend to go with black, but when you’re trying to keep things light and airy and cooling, people tend to go with white.

White is a popular choice for cooling as it can help by reflecting sunlight and radiating infrared heat, and now thanks to the work of researchers at Purdue University, they have produced what they are calling the “whitest white” paint. In a way, this is similar to the concept of the Vantablack paint, dubbed as the blackest black paint.

Based on the tests conducted by the scientists, they found that their whitest white paint can reflect 98% of sunlight and radiating infrared heat to the point where it manages to cool surfaces by 4.5C below the ambient temperature. This means that by using this paint, we can reduce our reliance on air-conditioning, which in turn will help produce less carbon emissions.

The researchers have reassured that despite it being able to reflect sunlight, it won’t be damaging to the human eye. According to one of the researchers, Professor Xiulin Ruan, “Our surface reflects the sunlight diffusely, so the power going in any particular direction is not very strong. It just looks bright white, a bit whiter than snow.” The researchers are anticipating that their paint will be available on the market in the next one or two years.

Filed in General >Green. Read more about Science. Source: theguardian