New ‘cooling glass’ sends heat into space

Developed at the University of Maryland (UMD, the microporous glass coating can lower the temperature of the material beneath it by 3.5oC at noon, and has the potential to reduce a mid-rise apartment building’s yearly carbon emissions by 10 per cent, according to the research team led by Distinguished University Professor Liangbing Hu in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering.

The team’s findings are detailed in a paper published in Science.

In use, the coating first reflects up to 99 per cent of solar radiation to stop buildings from absorbing heat. It then emits heat in the form of longwave infrared radiation into the cold universe, where the temperature is generally around -270oC.

In a phenomenon called ‘radiative cooling’, space acts as a heat sink for the buildings; they take advantage of the new cooling glass design along with the so-called atmospheric transparency window - a part of the electromagnetic spectrum that passes through the atmosphere without increasing its temperature - to deposit large amounts of heat into the cold universe.