Pirta will present at the Santa Cruz Works New Tech on April 5. Save the date!

Around the world…

…cities are struggling to combat the combined crises of rising temperatures and rising energy costs, but what if the answer was as simple as paint? Over the course of two years, our engineers have been perfecting a paint that passively cools a structure so that it is less reliant on energy dependent cooling systems. Pirta paint is unique because it reflects solar heat away from a surface more efficiently than other products, but it also does what no other paint can and allows the painted surface to lose more heat than it absorbs from the sun.

The world needs a better method of cooling

Heatwaves can be deadly to vulnerable populations, such as the very young, the elderly, and pregnant women, and are anticipated to be a serious threat to city life in the near future. The World Health Organization (WHO) has tracked hundreds of thousands of deaths from heat waves affecting cities around the globe and estimates that an additional 250,000 lives could be lost each year between 2030 and 2050 due to the increasing temperatures.

Protecting those most at risk for ill health and death related to heat exposure means cooling the buildings in which they reside. However, current cooling systems worsen the climate crisis by using significant amounts of energy and increase the already rising temperatures of urban heat islands by emitting substantial heat locally. Passive daytime radiative cooling (PDRC), in which technology mimics nature by finding ways to stay cool without significant energy input, has long been a holy grail of the climate change solution. At Pirta, we are proud to announce that our paint is a means of PDRC that is affordable, easy to use, and more effective than any other product available. Pirta paint can change the world.

Backed by science

Rigorous testing of our product has been a priority since the first prototype, and the University of Leeds has been testing how efficiently Pirta paint cools a structure since that time.

Reflectivity is a measure of how well heat and light bounce off of a surface, compared to how much is absorbed by that surface. The most reflective surfaces, such as a solid sheet of gold or aluminium, might reflect over 95% of the heat and light to which it is exposed. Pirta paint has an average reflectance of 99.36% in both ultraviolet and visible light. There are reasons, besides cost, why buildings are not routinely wrapped in gold and one of them is that any heat inside would be unable to escape.

Emissivity is a measure of how well an object can release heat by radiation. Whereas a reflective surface pushes heat away, an emissive surface is able to give off its own heat. The most emissive surfaces are found in nature, such as water or skin, and might have emissivity scores that approach 100%, meaning much of that object’s heat can be emitted away from itself. Pirta paint has an average emissivity score of 99.7%, so as it absorbs the heat from within a structure, that heat can be released to the outside.

The combination of high reflectivity, high emissivity, and low cost make Pirta paint an important part of the solution to rising temperatures, both on an individual and global scale.

64 °C / 114.4 °F

MAXIMUM DECREASE IN SURFACE TEMPERATURE AS COMPARED TO BLACK SURFACE

116.8

SOLAR REFLECTIVE INDEX (SRI) AS MEASURED BY ASTM E1980

Scott Fleming, CEO info@pirta.com +1-801-946-7838