This Material Might Change How We Cool Our Houses Forever

The deserts have buildings with two roofs. The first is heated by the sun. Air circulating between the first and second roof keeps the house a air temperature.

As a person living in the Nordics, I have understood that one main purpose of a roof is to keep rain out of the building. If the material is super hydrophilic, like said, it would soak up huge amounts of water transporting it to other building materials, and also become really heavy doing so. This might pose issues with the structural strength of the house. Of course, in the Nordics cooling energy use is not such a significant design parameter with houses 😅

Being hydrophilic sounds disastrous actually. In cold regions it means it would be destroyed as the ice expands, and in warm environments it would get moldy very fast.

I've had a Planetary Air Conditioner for several years. The cooling it provides shows up in my house first. One odd thing I've learned is that the panels themselves are colder than the surrounding roof. So much so that water will condense out of the air onto them long after the rest of the roof is dry. The damp panels, therefore, attract airborne dust and pollin, which binds to the surface like water-based paint. Algae grows in this neutrient base, and it binds to the surface as well. The surface needs to be cleaned, or it turns brown. When it turns brown, all your happy reflective properties go away. One has to clean the surface back to shiny. Does your happy reflective material put up with scrubbing? I reviewed a mirical surfacant a few years back that, while reflective, was in effect a micron thick plastic coating. It worked in lab conditions but washed off with any scrubbing.

Years ago while working in another part of the country, I had this old company house on a farm, and one day while exploring my new surroundings I came across some spiders, tiny little things, but it was their color that blew me away, they were silver ! like real polished chrome , incredible things that I've never seen anywhere else..

As someone who lives in the southern US, anything that can keep the AC from running all day is cool in my book!!

I can see dirt eventually clogging all those pores. It would be interesting to see how efficient it really is in a long term situation and if it really makes it worth using over other commercially available products over longer time frames out in the elements.

It is amazing the things beetles give us, red food coloring, Shellac for our furniture, and now a way to turn down the A/c. Not to disparage this video but just for reference to those who want to know more about white surfaces reflecting heat Purdue University Mechanical engineering did a video on this subject 3 years ago, Tech Ingredients a year ago, and NghtHawkinLight showed how to make such a paint from household products 10 months ago.

The channels NightHawkInLight and Tech Ingredients both have videos on making your own infrared cooling paint.

That manufacturing process, and the beetles themselves all look like the cross section of a tantalum capacitor. I would not be surprised there was electrical storage applications related to this product.

I’m waiting for one that changes it’s reflectivity and emission with temperature, so that at hot temperatures it turns white and emits heat, and at cold temperatures it turns black and absorbs heat, meaning it will always try to keep your house/car/head at the same temperature in both winter and summer :)

That's bad ass!!! And with the ability to be produced in other colors at the same time, if cost can be kept at a consumer level, then it's a real game changer for housing.

The formation of structural colour is incredible, you ought to talk to my old colleagues at the Nadeau lab, because in butterflies at least it seems the unmixing may be mediated by mechanical strain!

Thanks for another great video! I love the way you introduce a lot of actual scientific terms, but always know which ones to to explain in detail and which ones to breeze past quickly. That quality of judgement, knowing both what information is needed to understand the subject and having a feel for what your audience can quickly comprehend in a fast paced video, is probably the most important part of science education. And you do it really well. As for this new material, it sounds great! If they can put it in paint and use it in mass quantities it might make quite a difference in cooling buildings without electricity. I wonder, if this material was written into the building code for a large city and it gradually became the dominant color on rooftops, could it make a dent in the heat island effect? It would be amazing if a single color of paint could measurably cool an entire city.

I had a black dog and when he laid in the sun he would absorb so much light he was so hot to the touch. I now own an all white husky and he can lay in the noon sun for half an hour and he’s very cool to the touch.

All very good, and I suppose the material will also have a very low emission index for winter time, or doesn't it work in the infrared? For winter time, that would be important in order not to cool the house down. Also, in countries with a lot of sunlight all year round, like Greece where I live, where it is sunny very frequently during winter, sunlight wil heat houses quite a lot, saving money in heating costs. One must take into account the performance all year round.

Excellent! the super hydrophilic nature might be a show stopper but it is cool to know it exist as well as the Barium sulfide coating

Not an angle described on this video: a porous surface in exterior location gets dirty fast. Porous get filled very easy on polluted environments. Also on location where rain transport sand (areas near deserts). Porous get fill up and microbiota and after that plants start to get advantage of a great surface prepared for roots development. Thank you for the contribution!

For desert dwellers, reflecting the Sun is important, but preventing outgoing/upwelling radiation at night is also needed. In deserts, comfort costs are similar from cooling during Summer days, and heating during freezing winter nights. What is needed is a material that is extremely reflective for both visible light and thermal radiation, a broader white. Such a material would run a few degrees warmer during sunlight, but would conserve much heat during clear cold nights. What we really need is a switchable material, one that would be visibly white and thermally black when we need cooling, then switch to visibly black and thermally white when heating.

Fascinating. I'd be curious to see how it holds up outdoors with rain, specifically around fungal and algae growth, and how that growth affects the reflectivity.