Innovative “Super White” Paint Could End Need For A/C

• This new paint reflects 95.5% of sunlight.

• This means that the surface is nearly 8°C cooler than its surroundings.

• The paint can be used on buildings as well as cars.

Air conditioning is no longer a nice-to-have in modern vehicles, it’s a must-have. Not matter where we live, summer temperatures can soar to terribly uncomfortable levels when the sun’s full-on. This new paint can help keep our lives cooler.

The secret of this paint is that it practically does not absorb any solar energy, it simply reflects it away. Purdue University engineers have developed this white paint that simply will not heat up and remain cooler, up to 18 degrees Fahrenheit (-7.778°C) cooler, than the ambient temperature. In fact, according to interestingengineering.com, this paint could actually help with climate change. That would require lots and lots of paint… Point is that it seems to work.

“We’re not moving heat from the surface to the atmosphere. We’re just dumping it all out into the universe, which is an infinite heat sink,” said Xiangyu Li, a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who worked on this project.

Xiulin Ruan, a Purdue professor of mechanical engineering, said: “It’s very counterintuitive for a surface in direct sunlight to be cooler than the temperature your local weather station reports for that area, but we’ve shown this to be possible,”

A car or a building that never heats means that it doesn’t need to be cooled as much. This could represent serious energy savings as well.