Xiulin Ruan, Purdue University Engineering Professor & His Team Created Whitest Paint To Curb Global Warming
Dear Friends & Neighbors,
Xiulin Ruan, a Purdue University professor of mechanical engineering, and his students have created the whitest paint on record to help curb global warming. (Attribution: Purdue University photo/John Underwood, Presented at: WindermereSun.com)
(Please click on red links & note magenta)
For updated global info & data on COVID-19, please click HERE. For updated global data & graphs on COVID-19, please click HERE. For COVID-19 cases and death counts in USA by state, please click HERE. For COVID-19 cases in Florida via Florida COVID Action, please click HERE. For COVID-19 cases in Florida, via Florida state government, please click HERE.
Xiulin Ruan, a professor of mechanical engineering and his team at Purdue University have created the world’s “whitest paint”. This paint is so white that not only did it make it into the Guinness World Records book for being the whitest ever made, but its white properties could fight against global warming because it reflects 98.1% of solar radiation while also emitting infrared heat.
The goal of Professor Ruan and his research graduate students was not to break a world record but to curb global warming. Professor Ruan said in a statement, “When we started this project about seven years ago, we had saving energy and fighting climate change in mind.” The idea was to create a paint that would reflect sunlight away from a building. 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.
In the video published on April 16, 2021, “Whitest Paint In The World that Reflects Sunlight“, below:
In the video published on Sep. 18, 2021, “White Paint That Could Replace Air Conditioning | Game Changer For Climate Change?” below:
In the video published on April 30, 2021, “Ultrawhite Paint (with Barium Sulfate) – Periodic Table of Videos“, below:
In the video published on Oct. 23, 2020, “This white paint could reduce the need for air conditioning | Radiative Cooling Paint“, below:
Typical commercial white paint gets warmer rather than cooler. Paints on the market designed to reject heat reflect only 80%-90% of the sunlight and do not make surfaces cooler than their surroundings. If covering a roof area of about 1,000 square feet using this “whitest paint”, it could potentially result in reducing the need of cooling power by 10 kilowatts. Ruan said, “That’s more powerful than the air conditioners used by most houses.”
Two factors make this paint ultra white: 1. a very high concentration of barium sulfate (a chemical compound often found in photo paper and cosmetics) and 2. different particle sizes of barium sulfate in the paint. (Which wavelength of sunlight each particle scatters depends on its size, so a wider range of particle sizes allows the paint to scatter more of the light spectrum from the sun.)
Black roofs absorb and hold heat. White roofs reflect a lot of heat, making the building cooler and helping the roof last longer, in the video published on July 21, 2020, “This roof was over 160 F TEMP…why white roofs help BLACK ROOF HOT Cool“, below:
——————————————————————————————————————————
Excerpts from Purdue University News, about the research of this paint, in italics, below:
The researchers have partnered with a company to scale up the paint and put it on the market. Patent applications for this paint formulation have been filed through the Purdue Research Foundation Office of Technology Commercialization. For further discussion on this intellectual property, contact Will Buchanan at wdbuchanan@prf.org and reference track code PRF 2018-RUAN-68168. Information for this and other Purdue technologies can be found online.
This research was supported by the Cooling Technologies Center at Purdue University and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research through the Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (Grant No. 427 FA9550-17-1-0368). The research was performed at Purdue’s FLEX Lab and Ray W. Herrick Laboratories and the Birck Nanotechnology Center of Purdue’s Discovery Park.
Gathered, written, and posted by Windermere Sun-Susan Sun Nunamaker More about the community at www.WindermereSun.com
We Need Fair Value of Solar
~Let’s Help One Another~
Please also get into the habit of checking at these sites below for more on solar energy topics:
www.kiva.org/team/sunisthefuture
