'Sweating' Paint Cools Buildings in Humid Climates
- Editor OGN Daily
- Jul 2
- 2 min read
Researchers in Singapore have developed a white paint that can 'sweat,' significantly reducing the need for air conditioning.
There are already commercial paints with radiative cooling properties that remove heat from surfaces, and solar reflective paint that reflects sunlight to cool buildings to a certain extent.
However, in humid regions, the additional challenge with cooling is that water vapour in the air holds on to heat - meaning that air conditioning systems inside buildings are up against both sensible heat (temperature) and latent heat (moisture).
The good news is that researchers in humid Singapore have created a cement-based paint that combines radiative cooling, solar reflection, and evaporative cooling to achieve significantly better cooling, according to their study published in Science. This paint has a porous structure, so that it can hold water and slowly release it, similar to how our bodies sweat when we get hot.
To test their new concoction, the team painted three houses in Singapore: one with bog-standard white paint, one with commercial radiative cooling paint, and one with the new formula. The results were unequivocal.
The researchers observed that their paint helped reduce the electricity consumed by the home's air conditioning systems by 30-40 percent. That's because of the evaporative cooling effect, as well as the strong reflective cooling: it reflected 88-92 percent of sunlight. This could help make a significant reduction to the 60 percent of energy that buildings use to cool their internal spaces, especially in hot, humid climates like Singapore.
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