Ultra-white ceramic cools buildings with record-high 99.6% reflectivity::undefined
You know what also cools houses down super efficiently?
Trees
Excellent - how many trees can I grow on my roof? Can they be retrofitted?
/s
Is your roof flat? Many. /s
Trees? Not many. Grasses, herbs, wildflowers, and shrubs? Tons of them. And you can pretty easily retrofit over an existing sloped roof. And the weight is no more than a tiled roof.
Wetness could pose a problem to the structure
Kind of
There are eco apartments (planning idk about practice); grass on the roof and trees growing up the side
Lakehead University Orillia was going to do this for a new building but I don’t know what happened
You know what cools down roofs and generates electricity? Magic!
Another trick: bifacial panels oriented to pick up the reflected light from highly reflective roofs
What about Ultra white ceramic trees?
True though this is still practical for folks who live in deserts and other treeless places
In other news, snow blindness is on the rise in suburbia.
But what about it getting dirty and how well does it resist having its nano structure getting damaged? Like, there’s that spray that can make sneakers or clothes virtually stainproof…until you wear them several hours or rub your hand against them.
Super awesome. Not only is it white and shiny aluminum oxide, it uses a nanostructure, as observed on beetles, to maximize reflection, minimizing heat retained.
What’s the gains in contrast to regular white bathroom tiles? (Not a joke question)
Scotland here. Does this come in black?
Would we ever be able to use a material like this to reflect a significant enough portion of the light falling on Earth to reduce the total heat imparted by sunlight in a meaningful way? Could we use this as defacto ice caps to perhaps reduce global temperatures in any real way?
Probably yeah, but more likely it would have to be atmospheric and not surface based. When Mount Pinatubo erupted in 1991 it was estimated that the global temp dropped about 0.5 degrees C over the ensuing year due to the ash cloud blocking the sun
So the actual solution to climate change is to light everything on fire so the smoke cover cools down earth
Ah, the Dinosaurs solution.
The only feasible plan we have for increasing the albedo of the planet overall is atmospheric engineering. Basically you can make a reflective cloud that’s millions of square miles in area, many orders of magnitude more cheaply than any other kind of structure.
Covering our roofs with it would certainly make a difference. BUT, it works in the winter too, cooling the house when we want it warm. So, that might increase the need for heating in the winter.
Personally, I’m waiting for a commercial product, because my NM house has a large, south-facing stucco wall that is currently white, but not ultra cool white. Given my experience with the house, which is well insulated, I expect I could paint the house with such paint and not need any other cooling, even when it hits 100+F here. That wall is my bedroom wall, and I can feel the heat pushing through it in the late afternoon after a full day of exposure to the sun.
In winter my roof is covered with snow. White roofing would absorb less heat from the snow but that may be a good thing, reduce melting.
Could throw some tarps over it, but that’d be difficult and expensive
Is this what they meant about a “bright future ahead of us”?
Imperial March begins to play
My thoughts exactly at first glance! At least, now we know why some people think storm troopers are so cool.
Next trick: make it into a paint or spray-on treatment.
Better yet, make a giant sheet of it and float it in the ocean to fix the earth’s albedo and stop climate change.
Wernstrom!
First, I’ll need tenure
Done!
The copepods and algaes also need the light to draw down assloads of carbon though. Those tiny creatures suck up staggering amounts.
Oh, great idea! A nanoparticle ceramic aluminum oxide aerosol? What could possibly go wrong? 🤣
lol, it doesn’t have to be aerosolized in order for it to be sprayed. It can come out of a spray hose nozzle and be appropriately viscous. Workers can wear PPD.
You’re missing the point, and even at that: this reply is insanely short-sighted. Aerosolized or atomized, is still fucking airborne nanoparticle ceramic aluminum oxide. 🙄
I didn’t miss the point. You’re not understanding what I’m describing in a sufficiently contained substance that leaves its container and reaches its target surface with practically zero contamination of the local area. With a sufficiently viscous base liquid, it would be fine.
You’ve clearly never worked in any professional (let alone commercial) capacity with the medium(s) you’re championing, and the drive-by downvotes are whingy at best. Reddit will be the frog-boiling death of this platform. 🤦🏼♂️
I see that, rather than make you point with logic and facts, you’d rather just make petty and childish insults while complaining about downvotes. And you think it’s me bringing the bad Reddit influence?
Maybe a paint that you put on with a hairy stick brush would be better?
Why ceramic and not just paint?
The article addresses that. It is because ceramics are durable while paints and coatings are not.
Seems like the effort involved in putting down paint would outweigh the durability. Perhaps they’re thinking about robots to place the tiles though, like on Starship?
Roof tiles. They want to make these into roof tiles. There is a big picture in the article and they even talk about roof tiles. Did no one read the article?
Most coatings like paint that have this effect include ceramics to do most of the reflection, but the other paint stuff the ceramic substrate is emulsified in does not have near the reflectivity, so you’re impairing yourself if reflectivity/heat rejection is the only goal.
Maybe ceramics were considered more sustainable?
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I would bet there are reasons other than aesthetics at play. That’s the kind of paint you would want to use on your house in the Arizona desert, but I imagine driving by a bunch of houses with 99.9% reflectivity at the wrong time of day would be blinding.
Optimistically, this may be the discovery that leads to our future when everything looks like an iPhone.
Ceramic is brittle. Ever heard of hail?
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