A NOVEL EXPERIMENTAL FRAMEWORK FOR COMPARING DAYTIME RADIATIVE COOLING EFFECTS OF COOL PAINTSIN AN URBAN TROPICAL CLIMATE

Abstract

With the rollout of Singapore Green Plan 2030 and Housing Development Board (HDB) Green Towns Programme, there is an increasing use of cool paints to mitigate the effects of Urban Heat Island (UHI) and reduce energy consumption. When applied on a building envelope, cool paints would reduce building heat gain and cooling consumption, resulting in direct and indirect reduction of UHI effect present in cities.

This dissertation aims to develop an experimental framework to compare the daytime radiative cooling effects of cool paints and to gain a holistic understanding of the paints’ performance in terms of surface temperature reduction, and building heat gain reduction. Moreover, it is also one of the steps towards coming up with a feasible and possible development of a multi-layered facade using vertical greenery system, photovoltaics, cool paints and shading systems.

A literature review was first conducted regarding the classification of cool paints, paint pigments and solar reflectance and absorption of cool paints. This was followed by a selection of the two brands of cool paints, which were the two most widely used paint brands in Singapore. A plastic film for paint adhesion was then chosen for the experiment. While the results of the experiment conducted in Singapore’s urban tropical climate remain inconclusive, the experiment proves that the framework developed in this paper would indeed be scalable and inexpensive, as well as versatile when making comparisons between different cool paints.