Recovery Act - Novel Non-Absorbing, Visibly Transparent and Highly Reflective NIR Pigments for Cool Roofs Applications

Traditional dark-colored roofs create high heat loads in warm/hot climates due to their strong absorption of solar radiation. White or metallic painted roofs provide a good technical solution but are unlikely to be adopted by consumers for aesthetic and other objections. New pigments that provide effective cooling and yet allow roofs to retain their preferred dark colors are required. Ideally the new materials could be applied to the existing stock of roofs as well as to new ones. We propose to develop a novel polymer pigment medium capable of selectively reflecting most of the near IR radiation thus providing passive cooling. The pigments are completely transparent in the Visible and will not affect the appearance of the roofs. They can be designed to reflect more NIR radiation when the sun is high and less when it is low, thus adjusting to diurnal and seasonal changes. Few of the unique features of our pigment technology include: tunability of the position and bandwidth of the reflection band and a low-cost web based production process. The main goal of Phase I is to develop novel material processes, based on existing cholesteric liquid crystal polymer films and pigments technologies that will produce a high and broad enough reflection band to cover most of the NIR range. In phase II we propose to develop and demonstrate a roll-to-roll laboratory production line of such pigments. Commercial Applications and Other Benefits: We plan to develop the new NIR reflective pigments into a commercial product that will allow architects designing new houses and owners of existing buildings to reduce the cooling-energy demands without having to modify the appearance of their roofs. These features will allow a wide acceptance of the new pigment media leading to an estimated 0.5 quad or more in annual energy savings, slowing global warming, and mitigating the urban heat island effects. Derivative benefits are: elimination of significant amounts of green-house gases, a reduction in oil imports and increased energy security, large saving in cooling expenses as well as lengthening the roofs