High-performance subambient radiative cooling enabled by optically selective and thermally insulating polyethylene aerogel
Name
eaat9480.full.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
835.73 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
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Author(s)
Leroy, A.
Bhatia, Bikramjit S
Kelsall, Colin Clancy
Zhao, Lingling
Zhang, L.
Wang, Evelyn N.
Date Issued
October 2019
Journal
Science advances
Publisher
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Citation
Leroy, A. et al. "High-performance subambient radiative coolingenabled by optically selective and thermally insulatingpolyethylene aerogel." Science advances 5 (2019): eaat 9480 © 2019 The Authors
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Recent progress in passive radiative cooling technologies has substantially improved cooling performance under direct sunlight. Yet, experimental demonstrations of daytime radiative cooling still severely underperform in comparison with the theoretical potential due to considerable solar absorption and poor thermal insulation at the emitter. In this work, we developed polyethylene aerogel (PEA)—a solar-reflecting (92.2% solar weighted reflectance at 6 mm thick), infrared-transparent (79.9% transmittance between 8 and 13 mm at 6 mm thick), and low-thermal-conductivity (kPEA = 28 mW/mK) material that can be integrated with existing emitters to address these challenges. Using an experimental setup that includes the custom-fabricated PEA, we demonstrate a daytime ambient temperature cooling power of 96 W/m2 and passive cooling up to 13°C below ambient temperature around solar noon. This work could greatly improve the performance of existing passive radiative coolers for air conditioning and portable refrigeration applications.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aat9480
