Page 12 - Climate Control News November 2021

World News
World’s whitest paint has cooling power
LEFT: Professor Xiulin Ruan with the world’s whitest paint which is more powerful than the air conditioners used in most homes.
reflects 98.1 per cent of solar radiation at the same time as 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 tempera- ture without consuming power.
Typical commercial white paint gets warmer rather than cooler. Paints on the market that are designed to reject heat reflect only 80 to 90 per cent of sunlight and they cannot make surfaces cooler than their surroundings.
Using this new paint formulation to cover a roof area of about 1,000 square feet could result in a cooling power of 10 kilowatts.
Researchers were able to demonstrate this in a published paper showing that the paint is more powerful than air conditioners used in most homes.
Two features make this paint ultra-white in- cluding a high concentration of a chemical com- pound called barium sulfate – also used in photo paper and cosmetics – and different particle siz- es of barium sulfate in the paint.
“The 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,” Ruan said.
“There is a little bit of room to make the paint whiter, but not much without compromising the paint.”
PURDUE UNIVERSITY IN THE UNITED STATES HAS CREATED THE WORLD’S WHITEST PAINT WHICH CAN DRAMATICALLY REDUCE OR ELIMINATE THE NEED FOR AIR CONDITIONING.
THE RECORD-BREAKING PAINT appears in the 2022 edition of the Guinness World Records. Breaking a record for the whitest paint wasn’t
the goal for researchers, their focus was to curb global warming.
Purdue professor of mechanical engineering, Xiulin Ruan, said the research team started the project seven years ago to save energy and fight climate change.
Ruan said the idea was to create paint that would reflect sunlight away from a building.
Making this paint reflective also made it really white. The formulation that Ruan’s lab created
US commits to HFC phase down
THE US-BASED ENVIRONMENTAL Protec- tion Agency (EPA) has issued its final rule setting the parameters for phasing down hydrofluoro- carbons (HFCs) 85 per cent over the next 15 years.
The EPA rule sets allocation limits for the chemicals in line with the phase down schedule outlined under the American Innovation and Manufacturing (AIM) Act.
This final rule sets HFC production and con- sumption baseline levels and establishes an ini- tial methodology for allocating and trading HFC allowances for 2022 and 2023, and creates a robust, agile, and innovative compliance and enforcement system.
In addition to implementing this landmark phasedown program, the Biden-Harris Admin- istration is marshalling a whole-of-government approach to prevent the illegal trade, produc- tion, use or sale of HFCs.
EPA administrator, Michael S. Regan, said cutting these pollutants not only protects the
environment but strengthens the economy and shows America is back to leading the world in addressing climate change and curbing global warming in the years ahead.
EPA estimates that the present value of the cumulative net benefits of this action is more than $272 billion from 2022 through 2050, and that the rule will yield cumulative compliance savings for industry.
In 2036 alone, the year the final reduction step is made, this rule is expected to prevent emissions of the equivalent of 171 million met- ric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) – roughly equal to the annual greenhouse gas emissions from one out of every seven passenger vehicles regis- tered in the United States.
The total emission reductions of the rule from 2022 to 2050 are projected to amount to the equivalent of 4.6 billion metric tonnes of CO2 – nearly equal to three years of US power sector emissions at 2019 levels.
The US Air Conditioning, Heating & Refrig- eration Institute (AHRI) president & CEO, Ste- phen Yurek, said industry support this rule and are hopeful the administration will ratify the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol.
A global HFC phasedown is expected to avoid up to 0.5° Celsius of global warming by 2100.
L-R: EPA administrator, Michael S. Regan. US president, Joe Biden, has moved quickly to implement his climate change agenda.
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