The ancient Egyptians created a blue pigment which they used in their depictions of gods and royalty. Made with calcium copper silicate, the substance now known as Egyptian blue. And it could used to both save power and generate electricity.
The color created by the Egyptians thousands of years ago, has found a modern life’s application. Its blue pigment improves the energy efficiency, cooling the roof and walls, as well as collecting sunlight through the Windows.
Research has already said that surfaces coated with Egyptian blue absorb incoming visible light and emit it as near-infrared light.
The scientists from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that the fluorescent effect is 10 times stronger than originally thought. In fact, the pigment emits almost 100 percent as many photons as it absorbs, doing so at an energy efficiency rate of up to 70 percent because infrared photons don’t carry as much energy as visible-light photons.
Paul Berdahl, the researcher now hopes that the pigment could be used in paint or shingles applied to the roofs of buildings, where it would reflect sunlight and thus keep inside of the buildings cool, lessening the need for power-hungry air conditioning systems. Bright white paint already used for this purpose, although it’s typically only applied to flat roofs that can’t be seen from the ground blue may well be a preferable color choice for more-visible sloping roofs.
If the pigment used a tint window glass, they emitted near-infrared light. They can conceivably absorbed by photovoltaic cells located around the edges of the window. Which would convert it into electricity.
