Europe
through the reflective properties of inorganic pigments. One application of this
technology for coil coatings on roofs has
been developed in a partnership with
Corus, an Anglo-Dutch steel maker now
owned by Tata of India.
Relius, BASF’s decorative and protective coatings unit, has extended the use
of IR pigments to dark-colored coatings
on walls to reduce the amount of heat
aborbed by their surfaces by reflecting
thermal radiation when they are exposed
to sunlight.
Through a partnership with the Korean car manufacturer Hyundai, BASF introduced IR transparent and reflective
pigments into the coatings for plastic
dashboards, seats and central consoles so
that they provided cooler surfaces with
less need for energy for air conditioning.
Now BASF is looking at the potential
for using the IR pigments technology in
coatings and on films in more car components, including automobile windows.
Volker Warzelhan, senior vice president R&D for thermoplastics, told the
Ludwigshafen meeting, that IR pigments
could make a big contribution to achieving low energy demand in electric vehicles, which is crucial if the
battery-powered automobiles are to be viable. With heat management systems employing IR pigments, including IR
reflective windows, total energy savings
could be high as 45 percent.
BASF’s current IR system in automobiles operates within a coating, which
has a transparent dark-coloured pigment
on top with infrared light passing
through it to be reflected back by a titanium dioxide white layer underneath. In
the IR roof coating in buildings the light
is reflected by a dark chromium iron
oxide pigment without the need for a
white backing.
“The transparent pigment used in au-
tomobile applications is organic and is de-
rived from perylene,” said Guenter
Scherer, a business development executive
in BASF’s solar energy management unit.
“It is usually a black pigment but can also
be dark brown and other lighter colors
like orange, ochre and yellow. We haven’t
developed a blue yet.”
BASF is also looking at ways of using
the IR technology for coatings to cool
solar energy celesium cells, which are
more efficient in low heat and to
curb temperatures in LED lighting
components.
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