Partial photo: Wilhelm Gunkel
The whitest paint yet has been created. Coating buildings with it may one day cool them off enough to reduce the need for air conditioning. The new formulation reflects up to 98.1% of sunlight — compared with the 95.5% of sunlight reflected by researchers’ previous ultra-white paint , sending infrared heat away from a surface at the same time. The paint’s very high concentration of a chemical compound called barium sulfate helps give it the extreme whiteness, along with the barium sulfate particles being all different sizes in it. How much each particle scatters light depends on its size, so a wider range of particle sizes allows the paint to scatter more of the light spectrum from the sun.
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/04/210415141834.htm
Story Source: Materials provided by Purdue University. Original written by Kayla Wiles.