We urgently need new ways to control building temperature in a flexible and energy-efficient way…..and the brainiacs are responding I’m glad to say.
One of the newest is using copper to change a home’s “infrared colour” to decide how much heat it absorbs or emits. It’s still early days of course, but the work by Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering could be a game changer.
The US engineers designed a “electrochromic” building material with two layers—solid copper that retains most infrared heat or a watery solution that emits infrared.
A device then choses to either deposit copper into a thin film to retain heat, or strip the copper off to drop the temperature. That’s like a person putting on a coat or taking it off.
The researchers say that on hot days, the material can emit up to 92% of the infrared heat it contains. On colder days, however, the material emits just 7% of its infrared, helping keep a building warm.
As we know heating & cooling our homes & offices is a big problem. Buildings account for 30% of global energy use and emit 10% of all global greenhouse gas—with about half attributed to the heating and cooling of interiors.
With global warming causing more extreme & variable weather, there’s a need for buildings to be able to adapt—few climates require year-round heating or year-round air conditioning.
The cool thing (so to speak) is this smart material lets us maintain the temperature in a building without huge amounts of energy.
Cheers, John Fennell
Detail: https://pme.uchicago.edu/news/temperature-sensing-building-material-changes-color-save-energy