Scientists created the world’s whitest paint. It could eliminate the need for air conditioning.
- US professor Xiulin Ruan and his students created the substance, which has made it into the Guinness World Records book, to help combat climate change
- The paint reflects 98.1 per cent of solar radiation while also emitting infrared heat, cooling surfaces without consuming power
The whitest paint in the world has been created in a lab at Purdue University in the US, a paint so white that it could eventually reduce or even eliminate the need for air conditioning, scientists say.
The paint has now made it into the Guinness World Records book as the whitest ever made.
The idea was to make a paint that would reflect sunlight away from a building, researchers said.
Making this paint really reflective, however, also made it really white, according to Purdue University. The paint reflects 98.1 per cent of solar radiation while also emitting infrared heat.
Because the paint absorbs less heat from the sun than it emits, a surface coated with this paint is cooled below the surrounding temperature without consuming power.
Using this new paint to cover a roof area of about 1,000 square feet could result in a cooling power of 10 kilowatts.
“That’s more powerful than the air conditioners used by most houses,” Ruan said.
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Typical commercial white paint gets warmer rather than cooler. Paints on the market that are designed to reject heat reflect only 80 per cent to 90 per cent of sunlight and cannot make surfaces cooler than their surroundings.
Two features make this paint ultra-white: a very high concentration of a chemical compound called barium sulphate – also used in photo paper and cosmetics – and different particle sizes of barium sulphate in the paint, scientists at Purdue said.
Researchers at Purdue have partnered with a company to put this ultra-white paint on the market, according to a news release.
