Image credit – MIT/University of Hong Kong
During the summer, it can get pretty hot to the point where using a fan simply might not be enough to keep cool, and this is where air-conditioning comes in. Unfortunately using air-conditioning requires a lot of energy which can run you up a huge bill, and it is also not particularly good for the environment.
However thanks to researchers at MIT and the University of Hong Kong, they have managed to develop a heat rejecting film which will help reduce the amount of heat (up to 70%) that passes through a window, which in theory should help make things cooler and hopefully reduce the need for air-conditioning to be used.
This is thanks to the use of microparticles that make up the film. These microparticles are made from a phase-changing material that can shrink when exposed to high temperatures, and for the most part are relatively transparent which will allow light to pass through. To test their film, they shone light through to mimic incoming sunlight, and found that without the film the interior temperature rose to 102F (38.8C), but with the film, the interior was 93F (33.8C), making it slightly more tolerable.
The team expects to conduct more tests and tweak its formula to find if applying it in other ways could potentially improve on its heat rejection capabilities.
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