Page 22 - Climate Control News magazine March 2022

Building Services
Supercooling materials
control temperature
THE NEXT GENERATION OF SUPERCOOLING MATERIALS CAN HELP KEEP CITIES COOLER IN SUMMER AND WARMER IN WINTER.
ATEAM FROM UNSW Sydney has developed new intelligent building materials that can help keep the temperature in check throughout the seasons.
The innovative design adjusts the optical properties used in conventional heat mitigation materials (coatings for buildings) to change the amount of heat it reflects and emits depending on the temperature in the air.
The new materials were designed by Scientia Professor Mat Santamouris, Anita Lawrence chair in high performance architecture at the School of Built Environment, UNSW.
Santamouris said the new materials could be used worldwide in buildings to help better pro- tect them from the elements.
“This is a smart, intelligent building material that understands the urban temperature, and it is modulated according to the weather condi- tions making it ideal for cities that have issues with overheating in summer, but also have heat- ing requirements during winter,” he said.
Santamouris specialises in developing heat mitigation technologies and strategies that de- crease urban temperatures in cities worldwide.
Extreme urban heat is the most documented climate change phenomenon affecting more than 450 cities worldwide.
Higher urban temperatures significantly in- crease energy consumption needs and adverse impacts on health, including heat-related mor- bidity and mortality.
His team recently tested the new generation of materials in Kolkata, India, in an international collaboration with colleagues from the Universi- ty of Calcutta India, Public University of Navarra
Spain and the University of Tsukuba Japan. The study is the latest in their ARC Discovery Project, Fluorescent Daytime Radiative Cooling for Urban Heat Mitigation, which aims to develop cooling technologies to mitigate urban overheating
and reduce cooling energy demands in buildings. While many conventional cooling materials help mitigate urban overheating during warmer periods, they’re not necessarily suitable for cities
that have winter heating requirements. Furthermore, because the materials reflect light, they can generate glare, and can only be
used in specific locations.
“Traditional super-cool materials work by
having very high reflectivity and emissivity, making them ideal for cities that only require heat mitigation. However, they can cause over- cooling in cities that also need heating during cooler periods,” Santamouris said.
“They also can’t be used in low-level streets or vertical façades because of the glare, so they can only really be used on roofs of high-rise buildings – not in walls or pavements.”
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