A collaborative research team from City University of Hong Kong and the University of Hong Kong develops low-cost high-performance radiative cooling materials to cool buildings with lower energy consumption. By imitating the skin structure of an ant species in the Sahara Desert, the team enhances the radiative cooling capability of a polymer material significantly. While radiative cooling capabilities of ordinary materials are limited, the radiative cooling capability of the polymer material becomes enough for building cooling application. Conventional cooling technologies only dissipate heat from the buildings to its surroundings, but the material allows heat dissipation from objects on the ground to the space above the sky by radiation effectively. It helps buildings and building equipment to dissipate heat more effectively out of the building than conventional technologies, reducing their energy consumption.
To demonstrate the ability of the materials to reduce building energy consumption for cooling, the team also studies ways to effectively use the material. Using small-scale experiments on rooftops and simulation results, they verify that the material can be used on building rooftops for building cooling and in radiative coolers to enhance the efficiency of building equipment. With the material on rooftops, the experiment shows that the material can reduce the temperature below the roof by 6°C and may significantly reduce the cooling energy consumption for the space under the roof. The radiative cooler with the material is found to be capable to reduce cooling equipment energy consumption by up to 22%. The results have been reviewed by other researchers and were published in 8 different journal and international conference papers. They are planning to carry out large-scale rooftop tests to examine the effect of the material in reducing the cooling energy use in actual buildings.
< Back