Startup from Israel SolCold has found a way to cool buildings without energy costs. The team created a special paint with properties adapted for sunlight. It can cover all the buildings.
With the onset of global warming and with the constant increase in energy prices, engineers and researchers are constantly working on how to cool the air without concomitant heat emission. For example, applying to the surface of a paint reflecting sunlight and paint that produces hydrogen gas - so that any wall can become a source of energy.
Now SolCold, a start-up from Herzliya (Israel), has developed a way of cooling buildings without using electricity. The technology is based on the principle of laser cooling, in which a shot by a narrow beam of light from a laser on a certain material can significantly lower the temperature of this material.
How does laser cooling work? The material absorbs photons at the same frequency and at the same time emits high-frequency photons that carry more energy. In the process described, the energy is lost, which reduces the temperature of the material.
But instead of shooting lasers in buildings, the founder of SolCold, Yaron Shenhav (Yaron Shenhav) and his team developed a paint that absorbs sunlight instead of light from lasers.
The applied paint consists of two layers - an outer layer filtering out light at frequencies that do not help in cooling, and an inner layer that can absorb the remaining photons and give light. Laboratory tests have shown that when the paint is applied to a metal roof, it can cool the room down to 10 ° C.
Pilot tests of the new method on buildings will be carried out within two years.
The new paint will not be cheap: to cover it with 100 m2, it will take about $ 300. But for large commercial buildings, it will help reduce energy consumption and energy costs by as much as 60%.
The creators of the new paint are confident that their invention will be useful for such a large market as the space industry.
Cooling is a big problem in space travel: there is no air to remove heat from an object, such as a space station or shuttle.
Currently, vehicles and space stations use reflective fabric to protect themselves from sunlight, and heat exchangers release excess heat, but SolCold paint can replace them.