This Material Might Change How We Cool Our Houses Forever
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- Опубліковано 9 чер 2024
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The most reflective material ever created, researchers from City University of Hong Kong have achieved an incredible scientific breakthrough inspired by the Cyphochilus Beetle. With a record-breaking level of reflectivity, could this be the next stage of passively reducing energy costs? Let's find out...
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#breakthrough #science #nature #future
Chapters:
0:00 Cyphochilus Beetle and the breakthrough Record
1:04 Colours produced by nature and structure
3:40 How the Cyphochilus Beetle creates it's white colour?
7:01 Ad read
7:50 How to create the whitest material on earth
10:41 How did they test the material's reflectivity?
11:32 What are the benefits of the ultra white material?
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Being hydrophilic sounds disastrous actually. In cold regions it means it would be destroyed as the ice expands, and in warm environments it would get moldy very fast.
Not really because it ultimately depends on how it's applied in the buildings construction . Wood and concrete are also hydrophilic yet both are used in siding and roofing applications to great effect, it just means you need to build to accommodate the water. The problem i have with this is with 30 seconds of research you will find aluminum will reflect up to 92.2% of the suns energy (aka heat source) and this is 99.6, that's not a huge enough gain to say it will change anything.
@@wind5250 if it's the exterior layer, which is has to be to maintain the effect then yes it will be a problem. Just like wood and concrete have to be covered by something else or they are destroyed very quickly. For he beetles, holding onto moisture in horrible dessert conditions is NOT a problem. For a home or building it is. You're correct though aluminum will do that. It also tarnishes however so long term it loses it's reflectivity. I'm not sure about the longevity of this stuff.
@@MrBottlecapBill It doesn't have to be the first layer it can be second or even third , even if it was the primary layer it could be applied as paint. Concrete is used all the time as a siding aka stucco , wood is used the same way as well as roof shingles . To prevent the issues that come with water you simply need to add water control layer and a capillary break between the two materials .
Tarnish only has a bearing on performance on non painted/ coated aluminum , but you will only see this on damaged or worn areas. We are mainly talking heat transfer which is IR/uv reflectance not standard visible light . If you look at homes in the us from the 40's to 70's you will find millions of homes covered in aluminum siding for all of the reasons this video talks about.
You can apply the same effect with use of a peel and stick vapor barrier such as Aluma-Flash Plus or delta vent.
Fyi You are talking to a licensed contractor,
my specialties are home building and repair .
A base coat of this with some tough varnish would be fantastic on cars in hot regions. Gotta be creative yo.
Fouling is the bane of all of these nano structured surfaces: structural color, superhydrophibic, sticky gecko-inspired, etc. Nature gets around this by continually growing new parts (scales, leaves, feathers) and/or frequent grooming. This tech is cool but ultimately useless for anything other than specialized parts in niche optics.
As someone who lives in the southern US, anything that can keep the AC from running all day is cool in my book!!
Literally.
Not in the HOA books though...
@@Ramiromasters fuck HOAs, thankfully this material can be other colors.
Until it collapses your house after absorbing enough water during the wet-season.
' keep the AC from running ' Really it will only make a 2 or 3 degree difference most likely.
Even though the roof gets hot, and it's probably 130 or 140 in your attic, it's on the other side of the insulation.
The overall air temp around your house is probably 90+ or 100 on the hot days. You're still going to get hot, the roof heating getting back down through the top is a small percentage of the total heat.
As a person living in the Nordics, I have understood that one main purpose of a roof is to keep rain out of the building. If the material is super hydrophilic, like said, it would soak up huge amounts of water transporting it to other building materials, and also become really heavy doing so. This might pose issues with the structural strength of the house. Of course, in the Nordics cooling energy use is not such a significant design parameter with houses 😅
My first question- what about rain?
not to mention if it freezes the iceshards forming will destroy the structure for sure
I think this material would probably work better in paint than in tiles, for just this reason. A thin layer of pigment on a hard surface won't soak up water like the tiles would.
Those super hydrophilic tiles might be unsuitable for houses in the Nordics, but they will prove their usefulness in the hot weather of Asia. To solve the problem of transporting water to building materials, we just need to separate the roof with some supporting structure. Of course, this is only for the hot areas. Snow in cold weather is too heavy, and supporting structures might not work
And actually, if you live in hot weather, I think it’s much better to use solar panels as a roof. Those super hydrophilic tiles should be used on the wall.
The deserts have buildings with two roofs. The first is heated by the sun. Air circulating between the first and second roof keeps the house a air temperature.
That's also the inconspicuous benefit of putting solar on the roof, the air flow in between the two is a huge benefit
I've had a Planetary Air Conditioner for several years. The cooling it provides shows up in my house first.
One odd thing I've learned is that the panels themselves are colder than the surrounding roof. So much so that water will condense out of the air onto them long after the rest of the roof is dry. The damp panels, therefore, attract airborne dust and pollin, which binds to the surface like water-based paint. Algae grows in this neutrient base, and it binds to the surface as well.
The surface needs to be cleaned, or it turns brown. When it turns brown, all your happy reflective properties go away.
One has to clean the surface back to shiny. Does your happy reflective material put up with scrubbing? I reviewed a mirical surfacant a few years back that, while reflective, was in effect a micron thick plastic coating. It worked in lab conditions but washed off with any scrubbing.
I was asking myself the same question.
I can see dirt eventually clogging all those pores. It would be interesting to see how efficient it really is in a long term situation and if it really makes it worth using over other commercially available products over longer time frames out in the elements.
How big are dust particles? If they're bigger than the nano scale, they won't be able to get into the pores.
@bethanyhunt2704 You're probably right. Dust would most likely be larger. Testing it out in the real world is the only way to know for sure.
or you could just google the size of dirt particles, math actually is reliable, no need to test
@ashleyobrien4937 there's still no way of knowing how dirt will build up on a vertical piece will compare with one on a normal roof pitching. It may not go inside the pores but it can build up over the top and block them.
Maybe this isn’t a problem if those tiles truly take inspiration from insect scales. I mean, insects always look clean, right?😄
Years ago while working in another part of the country, I had this old company house on a farm, and one day while exploring my new surroundings I came across some spiders, tiny little things, but it was their color that blew me away, they were silver ! like real polished chrome , incredible things that I've never seen anywhere else..
Those weren't spiders. You found the bot factory.😁
I've seen the same here in New Zealand, I call them metallic space spiders! 😅
have no idea why here in tha caribean the spiders have fur coats.
caught an 8" one in the bedroom the other day (think it had been sleeping on my hand when the aircon was on, have a half asleep memory of a cold thing on my hand, last time it was a scorpion on my face...i found the scorpion a week later)
got a picture where youvjust want to give it a shampoo and brush, like a spider form of joe wilkinson (8 outb of 10 cats).
id take chrome nano bots instead. the little ones are very cool creatures.
Fur might prevent the sun from hitting the spider directly, so it has an easier time thermoregulating. Also the hairs on spiders are pretty incredible things, some can sense chemicals in the air, others are basically weapons... Very versatile @@luminousfractal420
The channels NightHawkInLight and Tech Ingredients both have videos on making your own infrared cooling paint.
Yeah. And they are real, unlike this hyped up opportunity for patents and commercialisation of something which will never perform as they claim it does.
It does not radiate in the Atmospheric Infrared window like Calcium carbonate does. So it absorbs longwave heat from the environment. And cannot get rid of it like carbonates do.
For their claimed result it would have had to be conducting heat to a cold reservoir below it.
It probably absorbs UV too. So wouldn't be much good in the tropics or southern hemisphere.
Carbonates work because there is no incident long wave IR photons from the atmosphere that excite their bond angle to wiggle. But it wiggles from ambient heat absorption picked up from air molecules and other IR photo frequencies, and and radiates photons at that frequency straight out into space.
Good old fashioned whitewash, would very likely outperform this.
As would a pure white limestone or marble tile.
The high filler density achieved with carefully sized nanospheres of carbonate is not necessary if you have a quicklime system like whitewash. It forms the ceramic like nano structure by adsorption of Atmospheric CO2.
I came here to say this too.
Those pigments had the added benefit of narrow band emissiivity in a far IR spectrum that didn't interfere with the atmosphere, meaning much of the energy taken from the building was also emitted out of the atmosphere (admittedly by small degrees, unless used very widely, which might be the point) not just reflected into the environment, and were simple to make. Also Satellite coatings using stuff like ZnO or Al2O3 (IIRC) could be worth a look for similar reasons.
It is also possible to make a roof that keeps a building cool/efficient using well designed insulation and ventillation, with cheap materials like wood fibre (insulative and higher thermal mass) without nano engineering.
I imagine though we'll need a wide variety of solutions, and the knowledge gained in this fascinating research could lead to something more focused, more reflective, better tuned, more durable, etc, but it won't have a wide impact unless it can be widely implemented across the '10% of energy consumption' mentioned in the video, and that might mean it needs to be cheap to produce, *and* cheap to buy (not protected and restricted).
Like Thunderfoot said in his uncharacteristically balanced summary of the problem, the work needed to address the impact of the industrial revolution on the environment is comparable to all the total human effort that has got us to this point.
I love biomimetic products, and the level of understanding in this research is fantastic, and hugely valuable for ongoing devlopment of products, but they have been honed into sometimes unnecessarily complex methods over millenia, and we might be better off with fast and simple where it exists, so we can get on with using it all over the world. But having said that, I'm also excitedly watching this space too. Bring it all on.
It is amazing the things beetles give us, red food coloring, Shellac for our furniture, and now a way to turn down the A/c.
Not to disparage this video but just for reference to those who want to know more about white surfaces reflecting heat Purdue University Mechanical engineering did a video on this subject 3 years ago, Tech Ingredients a year ago, and NghtHawkinLight showed how to make such a paint from household products 10 months ago.
I had a black dog and when he laid in the sun he would absorb so much light he was so hot to the touch. I now own an all white husky and he can lay in the noon sun for half an hour and he’s very cool to the touch.
I’m waiting for one that changes it’s reflectivity and emission with temperature, so that at hot temperatures it turns white and emits heat, and at cold temperatures it turns black and absorbs heat, meaning it will always try to keep your house/car/head at the same temperature in both winter and summer :)
I heard some news many many years ago and I think in Italy they made a tile that did this like many great ideas it faded away.
@@thomasbailey6997 Replace "faded" with "whisked".
@@thomasbailey6997 Concept likely works, implementation, not so much.
That sounds like a mood ring... I wonder if that technology would work for that application.
Brilliant! It may only need a tiny bit of current to implement the change, and that could be provided with a small solar collector.
That manufacturing process, and the beetles themselves all look like the cross section of a tantalum capacitor.
I would not be surprised there was electrical storage applications related to this product.
The formation of structural colour is incredible, you ought to talk to my old colleagues at the Nadeau lab, because in butterflies at least it seems the unmixing may be mediated by mechanical strain!
For desert dwellers, reflecting the Sun is important, but preventing outgoing/upwelling radiation at night is also needed. In deserts, comfort costs are similar from cooling during Summer days, and heating during freezing winter nights. What is needed is a material that is extremely reflective for both visible light and thermal radiation, a broader white. Such a material would run a few degrees warmer during sunlight, but would conserve much heat during clear cold nights.
What we really need is a switchable material, one that would be visibly white and thermally black when we need cooling, then switch to visibly black and thermally white when heating.
There is a commercially available product that achieves your specifications. It reflects solar heat on the exterior and emitts conductive and convective heat on the interior. Let me know if you want more info.
@@timhoeffel I'd like to know more, if you don't mind. Please share!
Be great to have a follow-up on this at some point.
That's bad ass!!! And with the ability to be produced in other colors at the same time, if cost can be kept at a consumer level, then it's a real game changer for housing.
3:47
Why would cyphochilus get you banned from youtube?
i want to know it to
Younger me saw this bettle, and squished it dead. Now I look back with horror. Knowing that I killed something so spectacular.
I don't like killing anything, because I'm unable to create life.. so I shouldn't contribute to diminishing the miriad of wonders that life has found to express itself in this incredibly small corner of the universe.
But how to keep it clean. So it keeps functioning in the radiative gap.
Look at the beetle?
That's the real question. Any white on rooftops and over public spaces is a good thing. The issue isn't how well it works, it's that most places/people have no interest in doing it. The answer is basically with a low friction, watertight cover material that you can hose off.
edit: *good thing
Thanks for another great video! I love the way you introduce a lot of actual scientific terms, but always know which ones to to explain in detail and which ones to breeze past quickly. That quality of judgement, knowing both what information is needed to understand the subject and having a feel for what your audience can quickly comprehend in a fast paced video, is probably the most important part of science education. And you do it really well.
As for this new material, it sounds great! If they can put it in paint and use it in mass quantities it might make quite a difference in cooling buildings without electricity. I wonder, if this material was written into the building code for a large city and it gradually became the dominant color on rooftops, could it make a dent in the heat island effect? It would be amazing if a single color of paint could measurably cool an entire city.
Excellent! the super hydrophilic nature might be a show stopper but it is cool to know it exist as well as the Barium sulfide coating
Just what we need. Massive areas of land like cities reflecting their heat into our atmosphere. Nature absorbs heat - seas, forests etc…
It would be handy if it could reflect it right back out of the atomosphere too.
All very good, and I suppose the material will also have a very low emission index for winter time, or doesn't it work in the infrared? For winter time, that would be important in order not to cool the house down. Also, in countries with a lot of sunlight all year round, like Greece where I live, where it is sunny very frequently during winter, sunlight wil heat houses quite a lot, saving money in heating costs. One must take into account the performance all year round.
Not an angle described on this video: a porous surface in exterior location gets dirty fast. Porous get filled very easy on polluted environments. Also on location where rain transport sand (areas near deserts). Porous get fill up and microbiota and after that plants start to get advantage of a great surface prepared for roots development. Thank you for the contribution!
So, if it I'd so highly water absorbent I have two questions:
1.) How can a facade of a building kept clean
2.) Will this material be constantly damp?
3.) In a typical City environment, how long can this stuff function until it's pores are polluted? Will it still function when wet and dirty?
Fascinating. What about reflectivity of infrared and ultraviolet light? Has this been measured?
Maybe this substance would be a good solar barrier for satellites.
It's emissive in the IR spectrum, like most things, with the added property of it's emission being primarily in the atmospheric gap ( 11:54 ). I would imagine on reflectivity alone it might be pretty good but a better mirror would do a better job probably - the reason it's useful on earth is because there's not many materials that can pierce through the blanket of our atmosphere, and this benefit wouldn't apply as much if at all in space (there's some atmosphere up there in low earth orbit and it causes drag but i don't think it'd be enough to be insulating in a way where this would matter).
The trick is that the material have to be good at radiate heat/infrared not reflect it. I think the video missed that important part that the tricky part is not just to reflect visible light, it have to at the same time be good at radiate heat. A shiny metal surface is good at reflecting visible light and is bad at radiating heat so it get hot in the sun.
If the material is porous, then it's possible that debris may fill up the surface spacing, such that it loses its reflectivity. Perhaps they can seal up the gaps with a clear coating.
Also, it attracts water. If water enters the pores and then freezes, the internal structures will be damaged by the expansion of the ice crystals. The material my flake and crumble after thawing out.
Sounds good, but over time won't those holes that don't allow the waves to penetrate thermal heat plug up. Also absorbing water could create algae growth...
Plug with what? The sand grains etc that make up general dirt are way bigger than those pores. Algal cells are also bigger than those pores. Really, that should be fairly obvious, since the beetles can't clean that chitin better than just wiping the surface, and they're not soiled or covered in slime either.
I'm more concerned with that chemical cocktail needed to make it, and the durability of the product. It's not going to be useful if the stuff is deadly to produce, causes something like asbestosis/silicosis as it breaks down in the environment, or has a service life of a year.
Well I guess I waste my money at a car wash from the grime and dirt buildup even though it's parked under a carport and only used two to three times a month. The beetles 🪲 must go to the same car wash I go to I've seen a couple of punch bugs there...
@@steveo5295 You are talking about surface adhesion, which is more down to static electricity and molecular polarity. I was talking about particles physically filling the pores of that 'sponge'.
On re-reading, it's unclear to me which kind of 'plugging up' you meant, so I'll use the more generous one and bow out with an apology.
Fascinating. I'd be curious to see how it holds up outdoors with rain, specifically around fungal and algae growth, and how that growth affects the reflectivity.
I suspect the super hydrophilicity is actually a problem in winter though, right?
It presumably means this material deteriorates particularly badly in frost conditions.
So then it'd only really be useful for regions where it never freezes, or you have to have mechanisms in place to replace these in that time, which obviously also makes sense for the reason that you don't want heat to escape in that time either.
You could just coat them with a simple polyethylene layer. Also they need to be protected from rain and dust regardless and the coating would ideally be relatively infrared transparent. During a fire the PE would melt/pyrolise, opening it up to adsorb the water.
@@BioTechproject27 part of that is a tricky thing to do if you are trying to use them as roof shingles
So this´ the best mirror availabe?! As crazy as it might sound but you could use it as the best parabolic mirror to heat up things as well. Science for the win.
As I understand it, this material reflects the beams in rather random angles. There are often multiple reflections, vs. a mirror doing just one.
Amazing material. One characteristic that needs to be investigated is how resistant is this material to UV light? Does the sun's UV break it down or yellow it?
There is a heat reflecting paint using ceramic micro spheres that are hollow and hold a vacuum inside. Add this to those ceramic pieces and that may add to the effect.
Awesome vid. I continue to be really impressed with your science delivery.
Could we use this as a base to reflect light to make solar panels more efficient?
This is what I was wondering 🤔
nighthawk in light and tech ingredients have some open source research videos on a very similar concept right here on youtube!
its a bit of a project, but its even doable/verifiable at home, if not scale-viable yet, as far as i know
My second question- when do the researchers expect this material to be ready to market?
There are some mistakes in this presentation; white is not a "difficult" hue for nature to reproduce? It's a lack of something that produces it, not an addition.
The polar bear example is very stark illustration of that, yet it seems to the presenter that fact is invisible, much more relevant than the butterfly, blue eyes are the same, they are infact, colorless, the blue is the reflection of the shortest wavelength, in absence of it, there is no color. A slight addition of melanin produces Green. The reason why it is not commonly found is because it is extremely disadvantageous, it shows the location from the longest distance possible, animals typically favor camouflage, it's why for example white lions and tigers never survive in the wild, similarly for prey. In the arctic where the surrounding is equally colorless, the pattern is found not uncommon in the least.
I know your talking about exterior use to help buildings keep cooler. But with your later comment on it wanting it to repel heat, could you not use it indoors where you wish to keep the rooms your heating warm. Would it not repel the heat back into the room away from itself? That would make it completely amazing and useful for energy conservation.
Sounds great on many fronts. My first question would be how does it weather - alumina is super-hard, but can it still be fractured by absorbed water freezing? And in terms of absorbing microscopic dirt, soot particles, algae, etc. - how long before its reflectivity is compromised below the performance of the alternative existing ceramic tiles?
Good for you Hong Kong. Thanks for helping the environment.
From an artist point of view, it would be interesting to experiment with this ultra white in contrast with the new ultra black paints coming out.
Check out Tech Ingredients, he shows how to make an ultra white that does sub-ambient cooling as well.
@@JJayzX also NighthawkInLight, they've been back and forth on this idea
Could you use this as a coating on a radiator for space applications? If the reflectivity is high enough and the conductivity is good enough, you could pack multiple radiators close to each other and the emitted infrared photons will just bounce around until they leave the array instead of getting reabsorbed. This could make for some really compact and efficient cooling solutions for space craft. Since one of the problems of quick inter planetary transport via nuclear electric propulsion is the requirement for truly enormous radiators, this could really help.
The lidenfrost effect can be overcome by high pressure water spray like that which comes out of a nozzle of a spray bottle. Then switch to a large jet after the spaced out water spray cools the material enough to become below the lidenfrost threshold
I would love to experiment with this stuff for vapor transit and thermal stability under freeze thaw cycles. The problem with white roofs is condensation under the roof due to vapor passage from building interiors. This results is frost formation at the transit boundary and potential rot of organic framing and soluble surfacing with thawing of that frost line.
I’m confused on how you would make paint out of this.
Crush it to pigments? The nano structure should still be able to do it's job.
2:12 I'm impressed, the nano holes shown are roughly tuned to the full wavelength of blue light; just a bit under 500nm.
Further in, I can see molding middle Dalton weight plastics, such as PVC or Polyethelene into these forms, cheaply and quickly
I remember reading about a paint a few years ago which is a suspension of varying sized titanium dioxide nanoparticles. It too had a very very high solar reflectivity, but also was transparent to IR, meaning a house can shed its own heat through the paint layer, while the paint prevented solar absorption.
How does this compare to that?
Being porous does not inevitably mean being hydrophilic. Look at styrofoam, for example. Maybe some researchers can find other compounds that make a highly reflective and hydrophobic material that would be better suitable for roofs.
TechIngredients has a video from March 2023 that discusses barium sulfate being used and making a paint from it. There's also an old University of Utah paper discussing how just adding barium sulfate to paint works really well too. Lastly, there's a guy using calcium carbonate I think for paint-like applications that does a great job too from NightHawkInLight.
Does it need to be cleaned in a specific way to stop micro particles from entering the pores and changing the properties of the material?
The hydrophilicity can be solved by adding a topmost layer of acrylic or a similar transparent and durable material that can allow light to pass through to be reflected by the main material while staying dry. If this could be done efficiently and affordable for mass production then it could be a game changer.
Brilliant! Thank you for sharing this incredible video news on nature s reflective white nano material & now scientist are producing nano materials & improving the reflectivivity of light on these new nano materials
Considering the material is porous, how does rain and dust affect its reflective properties? How difficult would it be to clean?
There is something I don't understand about this sunlight reflecting strategy : What happens in winter ?
Doesn't the higher reflectivity mean the house will have to use more energy to keep warm during winter (therefore cancelling the efficiency benefits you get during summer) ?
Is it easily protected from becoming dirty, which would reduce its reflectivity?
If it is wet, and freezes, does it break?
How effective is the material when wet or grubby? Maybe the material (alumina is highly refractory) allows contamination to be 'burnt off' under hot sunshine.
now design for a slight mechanical shift in angle to change the reflectivity so that it absorbs heat in the winter months.
This discovery might be of very great use if they could adapts such techniques, in super cooling the artic zones where is melting with a unique aerosol. Also maybe very effective sunscreens for beach enthusiasts!
need a comparison vid between this tech (structural color reflectivity) vs. "space reflective" materials as beautifully covered by @Nighthawkinlight
especially since he has been focused on reflection that will pass through the atmosphere and cool more efficiently as a result. maybe they could be combined idk
oh it did get mentioned, so it does already emit in a high transmission wavelength band
So it's comparable to nighthawk's material?
For some reason I now wanna see Vanta black next to this stuff. The contrast of these materials would probably be literally unreal.
Beautiful.
Everyone talks about roofs- i think their main benefit is going to be radiative cooling. If it doesn't take in much energy but still radiates the same, this would be an amazing passive cooling mechanism which would work independently from light hitting it
Impressive what kind of things can happen on such a small scale
I would be interested in the reflectiveness of this material when it is soiled in the typical way any other surface would in a building.
So the weight delta between damp and dry state of this material is the limiting factor for a comercial or other construction aplications! Would be nice to improve upon its lack of hydrophobic capabilities as the weight gained from it being damped or floded might prove to be a game breaker for some uses. That said, how hard is it for algae or moss to colonize this material? As in a high humidity environment I recon it would store much more water in its pores than in a dry environment....If what I'm thinking is correct, it might still be usable in desert environments as linning material for houses and buildings.
Regardles, it was interesting to watch. Ty
Considering the idea of the practicallity of using these things as roofing tiles or outside tiles, I wonder if the research team did any study on if mold could grow inside the tile if it gets moistened outside for long periods of time, damaging the tiles and it's solar reflecting capabilities. I reckon cleaning it would involve more than just bleach and soap.
The way it absorbes water means a few problems if not coated to prevent that "feature". As this means water getting into and freezing would break down the structure, mineralization would hapen as water evaporates and it could provide a great environment for biological growth.
Possible to get the benefits of this well reducing the drawbacks, if you can find a sealent that wont interfere with the properties to much, and breaks down with heat. That way when the fire starts to cook them they suddenly can absorb that water. Though by that point not sure how effective that will be at actually helping, as major damage will be done already
Lets hope this new material/paint is on the market soon and available in all countries at a reasonable price!!
Interesting but I fear it will prove to be ineffective in most environments. After a year or so, any external surface is covered in dust and the porous nature of this super-material will probably invite dust particles to stick even better. I am looking forward to research into how materials like this can be made dust-repelling or self-cleaning so that they remain effective over many years.
The porosity is in the photonic range, the outer layer could likely be coated and only reduce slightly its effectiveness.
@@mkperez7465 Soot particles (10..100nm) will fit easily into the pores of the material. Coatings have less than 100% transmissivity and they have porosity of their own. Also, the light needs to pass twice through any coating.
@@ManfredBartzif they dont find way to seal surface layer it will be useless. Outside environment is full of particles of all sizes and you wont be able to clean 3D structure, but the biggest problem is that its hydrophilic, they most likely pulled that whole "oh look it wont have leidenfrost effect" thing out of their pocket to make it sound like feature when its a flaw. Think about it, it will be damper than surrounding environment from all the water inside so invitation for mold and moss, those will actively destroy that surface (both color by filling gaps and damage physically, think moss eroding rock). On top of that if water inside freezes that tile is done for. So any place where temperature drops a single degree under 0° for a single night a year is out of question as a potential market. Places where temperatures never drop below zero are... humid parts of the world where molds, mosses and whatever else loves to grow 😂
@@sznikers You could just coat them with e.g. a simple polyethylene layer, as any protective layer should ideally be relatively infrared transparent. During a fire the PE would melt/pyrolise, opening it up to adsorb the water.
@@BioTechproject27 polymers will get destroyed by UV
Also dont focus on that leidenfrost effect, thats a decoy to focus conversation on it.
Nobody is resigning from ceramic tiles in building industry cause they have leidenfrost effect, that's ridiculous.
Easy answer is to spend £15k on external 150mm cladding with a nice render over it = blocks solar heating in the summer so we have to run the heating now as it's so cold in the house as the walls never heat up any more .....Not sure iff there is a benefit in the winter as the vented roof draws all the heat out ! ... So much for " greeness " and saving energy .
What happens with that superhydrophilicity when it rains? Does that mean the new surface will stay wet / moist for extra extra long? Leading to mould? Filling the cavities? Tanking efficiency?
This would work well as a solar panel backing, where efficiently is based on how much interaction the cell receives.
Nice. Now what happens when mold grows on it? Perhaps you could clean it with a torch since it is reasonably fire resistant, but my hypothesis would be that mold would love to establish itself on this during a damp season and ruin most of the gain. The other place it might be valuable is as a refractory.
I've worked construction in the past and there are a few questions. One is about debris. What happens if tiny dust particles come into contact over time? How easy it is to clean? What is the material's lifespan? If it's only good for 5-10 years before cracking/breaking/warping, then it's not worth the effort to install it. How resistant is it to impacts like hail or perhaps a rock thrown from a lawn mower? Can it withstand 40 mph wind gusts? There's lots of testing that needs to be done.
If the material is used to build a ceramic tile, I would assume that it has a thin layer above it which is very transparent but easy cleanable and resistant to wear and tear.
I think it's a neat concept and I look forward to hearing more about it as others test the concept. If this material can be made cheaply enough, I'd happily tile my roof with it just to say that I did. The real issue, imo, is going to be producing tiles that are sufficiently durable enough and economical enough that they can actually replace the current materials being used. I also wonder how tiles might be used as insulation in outer space for satellites and whatever else has to deal with solar radiation.
How much power could you generate with a thermocouple between tiles made of this material and tiles made or coated with Vantablack?
a cinema screen with that material would be excellent
The material's hydrophilic nature and porosity would make it such that mold would become a factor in decreasing its reflectivity significantly. The mold factor would have to be considered in the development.
If it gets dirty, doesn't that reduce the reflectivity dramatically quite quickly? You would need to clean it all the time to stay better than regular paint, right?
We need this in Arizona, like, yesterday.
I'm curious how much impact that would have on urban thermal blooming / heat island effect if deployed across a densely populated area.
Absolutely confirms the value of nano-technology materials and also the value of nature's evolved cleverness. Now I wonder if there is a better way to make near-perfect mirror reflection surfaces as well, for use in solar thermal power stations.
Being hydrophilic would also mean the intrusion of molds into the material/ easy attachment to the surface.
I see a possibility. I don't think it would work long term on a roof. However if it has insulating properties it could be incorporated into the interior of a house to hold in heat and cooling.
This - is hard core. I imagine the pores are significantly smaller than most dust particles, and it could even be covered with a thin layer of glass(?) to keep the pores from getting plugged by dirt, water, etc.
Hmm cannot be used at all in winter. Ice expanding will break the tiles 100%. But extremely useful in hot regions.
What an exciting discovery!
This appears to be a promising discovery. Application in the field will have to take in a lot of variables. The porous nature of it's structure would be problematic in most climates, but a composite with glass might be an elegant solution. I wonder if this material could be utilized as a condenser in drier climates. On our warming world this sounds like it could be a game changer.
If it works, then they need to put it on one side of panels that can be flipped to to absorb infrared. Otherwise it would increase heating costs. Depending on cost a solar roof may be the better options for most buildings.
It doesn't matter if it reflects 100% of light if it gets covered dirt that absorbs all the light. There are other wonder materials like this, and I have yet to hear about their cleanability, dirt collection tendancies, or longevity.
As Dr Miles was talking, all I could think of was using as much roof area as feasible for solar panels.
I can see value for this product, if it's proven, as cladding, considering the flammability of materials which have proved dangerous.
In addition, too many academics model their videos on an academic seminar.
Is it possible to coat this in a hydrophobic material like a thin veneer which would possibly eliminate all of the problems that would occur with it trapping water and/or ice?
Cool material (no pun intended), but if you are going to cover your home with it, there are other properties that are needed to take into consideration like how it stand in weather over the years, is it susceptible to mold, uv rays, will it accumulate rain water and so on.
The big question is how well it would do the job of roofing shingles. If water is drawn into it's structure, how will that affect it as a shingle? Will is last in the weather?
Waiting for the @Nighthawkinlight home DIY version of this material tutorial video soon :-)
I live in the High Desert of Southern California, so saving $$ on cooling costs is always my top concern.
It can get up to 120°F/49°C here in the summer.
My concern is if it is so refective, how would effect those viewing it? Will it light blind those looking at it?
A delightful example of the power of bio-inspired research!
WOW.. This is Science and Technology
Combine this in a way with the darkest black material and you have made a device that continuously grabs condensation from the air and collects it using passive energy.
In four season climates you would have to create a roof system that would slide the white material onto the black material and reverse when the season changes. One pocketing the other would achieve this on a roof.