Paint-based cooling fabric

Recently, I had come across a Youtube video by The Action Lab, a channel that explains various scientific subjects with practical demonstrations. The subject of the video was on self-cooling clothes, a subject I had been researching and working on in the Engineering Projects section of Barclays Lab.

I Made The World's First Self-Cooling Clothes - The Action Lab

The video explained that there was a special kind of paint, named Cryopaint, that managed to keep whatever object it was painted on significantly cool even in a bright sunny day. It achieved this through absorbing heat and emitting it through specific frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum that wouldn't be absorbed back. These specific frequencies are within what's called the "infrared atmospheric window", the range of frequencies that can pass through the atmosphere of the earth. The reason Cryopaint has to emit through these specific frequencies is due to Kirchoff's Law of Thermal Radiation, which posits that every substance emits heat as well as it absorbs heat.

James Orgill, runner of The Action Lab, coated one set of clothes with Cryopaint to test if it could keep himself cool during a hot summer day with remarkable success. Near the end of the video, he questioned why has no-body made this into a product that could be purchased. I think a comment on this video, written by DataScienceDIY, succinctly pointed out that paint tends to degrade as radiation from the sun shines on it alongside the movement of fabric as a person used it.

Considering the kind of people wearing self-cooling clothes, people working outside, the chances of them moving all of their body to accomplish their tasks makes paint cracking and degredation a high risk problem. This would result in needing to reapply the paint constantly, thus being too inconvenient to use for long-term outdoor operations.

In conclusion self-cooling clothes, at least in this form, require lots of maintenance to be functioning. Even if this working prototype has this issue, James Orgill did advance research on making a cold sweater into a possible and saleable reality. Research into radiation-resistant and flexible paint, combined with cryopaint, would solve these issues and make it from just a temporary form of work-wear into a comfortable every-day piece of attire.

Some posts in the near future will involve analyzing the work of the channel NightHawkInLight, who manufactured his own home-made cryopaint (and even his own self-cooling fabric!) and his various projects that involved it.

Radiative Sky Cooling Series - NightHawkInLight