Magnesium titanate as a new high solar reflectance pigment to fabricate cooling engineering composites for energy saving areas

Abstract

Fresnel’s law and Maxwell’s equation indicate that the greater the dielectric constant of the material, the greater the refractive index of the material, which makes the material present higher solar reflectance. Magnesium titanate (MT) is an important dielectric ceramic material. It is necessary to investigate the solar reflectance effect of MT particles in practical application areas. In this work, the cooling engineering polymer-ceramic composites were prepared by MT particles and polypropylene (PP)/styrene-ethylene-butylene-styrene copolymer (SEBS)/processing oil matrix. The cooling efficiency of composites was analyzed by solar reflectance, IR thermography analysis, emissivity and solar simulation analysis. The results indicate that solar reflectance enhanced from 16.09% to 60.51% with the content of MT particles increased from 0 to 10 phr. Meanwhile, solar simulation result presents that the inner temperature decreased from 50.4 to 31.5 °C, meaning the fabricated polymer-ceramic composites has a cooling effect of 18.9 °C. Thus, MT dielectric ceramic material can be used as a solar reflectance filler to fabricate cooling engineering polymer-ceramic composites for energy saving application areas.