Superhydrophobic waste paper-based aerogel as a thermal insulating cooler for building

Xuejie Yue, Hai Wu, Tao Zhang, Dongya Yang and Fengxian Qiu

Energy, 2022, vol. 245, issue C

Abstract: Daytime subambient radiative cooling is a most promising alternative to electricity-free building cooling. However, optical performance degradation arising from surface contamination and inevitable parasitic heat gain still pose unprecedented challenges to cool building at subambient temperatures. This paper proposed a superhydrophobic cellulose aerogel cooler (SHB-CAC) as building envelope by integrating self-cleaning capacity, passive daytime radiative cooling and thermal insulation to reduce environmental heat gain. The SHB-CAC demonstrates high solar reflectance (93%) and long-wave infrared emittance (91%), accomplishing a temperature drop of 8.5 °C lower than the ambient under sunlight of 800 W/m2 in the outdoor experiment. Notably, the SHB-CAC possesses low thermal conductivity (28 mW/(m∙K)) that suppresses parasitic heat gain from warmer surrounding and reduces cooling energy consumption. The self-cleaning property resulting from superhydrophobicity protects SHB-CAC from water wetting and dust contamination but also maintains its good surface radiation capacities under different humidity environment. A building energy simulation was conducted and results showed that 43.4% of cooling energy on average could be saved compared to the building baseline consumption, if SHB-CAC was widely used in China, indicating that the strategy of optical and thermal conductivity management of cooler has the potential to reduce the energy consumption of buildings.

Keywords: Passive radiative cooling; Aerogel; Thermal insulation; Spectral selectivity; Radiative cooling; Building energy saving (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:245:y:2022:i:c:s0360544222001906

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2022.123287

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