Brightest White Color In The World

We have also written about the Vantablack which is the darkest black color ever created by mankind. Since then, other research was being conducted to compete with the Vantablack through Musou Black and Black 3.0.

But how about the brightest color in the world or the whitest as some might say? It seems that bright engineers out there have managed to create what is believed to be the whitest paint yet, an innovation capable of cooling buildings as well as reducing the usage of the air conditioner(AC). This will ultimately help reduce global warming.

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Reflecting 98.1% Light

If Vantablack has an absurd capability of absorbing 99.9% of light, this white color with no name is quite the opposite. Based on an analysis that has been done, this white color can reflect up to 98.1% of the sunlight that shines upon it.

The idea to use this very bright white paint to cool down the temperature of a building has existed for decades. However, the advancement of nanotechnology recently has realized a new reflection potential and due to that the cooling effect that can be experienced by its users.

Since 2014, scientists have managed to invent paint layers that can achieve sub-ambient daytime radiative cooling. This means that the surface of a building during the daytime is a lot cooler than the temperature outside.

Cooling Off Building Technology

Currently, a group of researchers led by Xiulin Ruan, a mechanical engineering professor at Purdue University wished to bring the radiating cooling technology to a new level based on a study published in the ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.

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Their ultra-white paint made the surface of the building 4.5 °C cooler than the surrounding temperature at noon and 10.5 °C cooler at night time. It seems like a natural cooling system that does not depend on the use of AC.

If you were to imagine the use of energy needed to cool off a house that is 1000 square feet and if we used this ultra-white paint, it will save almost 10 kilowatts off clean energy which is comparable with the power of an AC running inside that very home.

In other words, on most days during the summer, you will not need to turn on your AC at all just to cool yourself off from the scorching temperature. This ultra-white paint will help to save on the energy demand required to turn on an AC.

Further Research and Commercial Value

Xiulin Ruan and his team have established this paint for many years and conducted several experiments with various materials and production techniques. They finally managed to create paint made from pigments of barium sulfate, a white powder that can reflect the sun with many types of light waves.

Its potential to reflect various types of waves makes it very unique and special compared to other paint in the market which utilizes titanium dioxide as the pigment. Despite titanium dioxide being quite reflective against the sun, it also absorbs ultraviolet(UV) rays which will ultimately result in heat.

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Barium sulfate on the other hand does the opposite as it is capable of reflecting the UV rays making it remain cool during the hot summer. One other thing that made this paint very good is the size of the matter itself.

The average size of matter in this paint is roughly 400 nanometers which suit the size of the sun's wave in the middle spectrum. But this team also incorporated other matters of different sizes to optimize the reflective capability of the paint in the wide spectrum of the sun's waves.

In order to reflect the whole range of lightwaves, they will have to make the size range of the matter much wider. This highly reflective paint is an improvement of the previous version which was launched in October 2020 that has a reflective index of 95.5%.

Naturally, it has raised questions about whether the researchers can increase the reflective capability of this ultra-white paint in the future. Perhaps, who knows.

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