United States building energy consumption per year, about 10% from the glass, which caused owners an annual expenditure of about $ 50 billion. Recently, the United States arm of the Energy Department at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory researchers said it is looking into a low-cost polymer heat reflective coating in order to solve this problem.
According to the laboratory scientist Raymond Weitekamp introduction, our goal is to the future can be purchased at the local hardware store to the coating, and only need to themselves be painted on the glass, you can achieve the goal of energy saving. Coating of new study could selectively reflecting infrared light, but allows visible light through the glass, and therefore especially suitable for hot climates and regions of the South, significantly reducing energy consumption of air conditioning.
United States Department of energy advanced energy research programme (ARPA-E) has for the Berkeley Lab, a team of scientists to provide the $ 3.95 million in incentives to support their research this innovative coating products. The team plans to develop a low-cost and scale application of the product, which costs US $ 1.5 per square foot, which is equivalent to the current one-tenth of the cost of commercial glass energy-saving coatings on the market.
