Purdue record for the whitest paint appears in latest edition of 'Guinness World Records'

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From Purdue University News. 

Excerpt: ...the world’s whitest paint, ... may dramatically reduce or even eliminate the need for air conditioning. The paint, developed at Purdue University, has earned a Guinness World RecordsTM title. ...“When we started this project about seven years ago, we had saving energy and fighting climate change in mind,” said Xiulin Ruan, a professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue, in a podcast episode of “This Is Purdue.” Ruan invented the paint with his graduate students. ...The formulation that Ruan’s lab created reflects 98.1% 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 temperature 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%-90% of sunlight and can’t 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, Purdue researchers showed in a published paper. “That’s more powerful than the air conditioners used by most houses,” Ruan said.…

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