Optical characterization and modelling of paint top-coatings for low-emittance applications

The study reports on characterization of low-infrared-emittance paint top-coatings for interior building applications in which the thermal radiation becomes important in comparison with thermal conductance. The top-coating that consist of a binder with aluminium flakes has been optically characterized in the infrared wavelength range in order to determine single flake and binder emittance from reflectance measurements. The single flake emittance was found to be 0.12 for non-leafing cornflake. The absorption coefficient that determines the binder emittance as a function of binder thickness was 0.060 [μm]−2 and 0.085 [μm]−2 for Lumiflon and polyester respectively. These results were used as parameters in a simple model of the flake-binder top-coating to investigate how the emittance of the top-coating was influence by the two components and compared with a state-of-art low-emittance commercial paint. It was found from the modelling that replacing the polyester binder with Lumiflon reduces the infrared emittance (at room temperature) from 0.36 to 0.30. Increasing flake reflectance from 0.88 to 0.96 and at the same time reduce flake thickness from 2 to 1 μm gives an emittance of 0.20. However, the real samples prepared with Lumiflon showed a severe degradation caused by the flakes floating up closer to the surface which indicates a viscosity problem that needs to be solved for practical use. Thinner flakes with higher reflectance can be found if vacuum metallised pigments are used instead of ball-milled.