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Purdue Professor Xiulin Ruan and his team have developed the world s whitest white paint (Credit: Joseph Peoples/Purdue University)
Given that white was one of the first colors used in art in the 15th century, one would think that there is little room left to improve its whiteness. It turns out that is far from the case. A team of researchers led by Xiulin Ruan, a professor of mechanical engineering at Indiana s Purdue University, recently revealed an ultra-white paint that they believe could even help combat climate change.
The scientists, who spent six years creating the world s whitest white paint, assert that the options currently available make surfaces warmer rather than cooler. That s because they only reflect 80 to 90 percent of the sunlight and cannot make the exterior cooler than the surrounding temperature. The newly-revealed ultra-white paint not only reflects 98.1 percent of sunlight, but also prevents surface infrared heat from being absorbed.
Xiulin Ruan, a Purdue University professor of mechanical engineering, holds up his lab’s sample of the whitest paint on record. Jared Pike/Purdue University
At noon on a sunny summer day, the temperature of a conventional dark-colored flat roof can reach 150 degrees Fahrenheit (65 degrees Celsius), according to the U.S. Department of Energy. That heat will warm the inside of a building or a house as well, making it necessary to use air conditioning an energy expenditure that in turn often requires burning fossil fuels at electrical power plants, whose emissions contribute to the progression of climate change. It s a bedeviling problem that might be easily solved, if we only had roofs that reflected solar energy back into the sky, instead of absorbing it.
Researchers Create The Whitest White Paint
Purdue University engineers have created the whitest paint yet. Coating buildings with this paint may one day cool them off enough to reduce the need for air conditioning, the researchers say.
The researchers believe that this white may be the closest equivalent of the blackest black, “Vantablack,” which absorbs up to 99.9% of visible light. This was the controversial pigment that artist Anish Kapoor exclusively copyrighted in 2016. The new whitest paint formulation reflects up to 98.1% of sunlight – compared with the 95.5% of sunlight reflected by the researchers’ previous ultra-white paint – and sends infrared heat away from a surface at the same time.
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