Tangwei Mi

Integrating radiative and evaporative cooling shows promise for enhancing passive cooling, but durable self-curing integrated cooling paints remain underdeveloped. We designed a modified cementitious structure with advanced thermal-optical and mass transfer properties, boosting cooling power while ensuring durability, mechanical strength, and broad adhesion. The paint achieves 88 to 92% solar reflectance (depending on wetting), 95% atmospheric window emittance, ~30% water retention, and self-replenishing properties, maintaining stable optical performance even when wet. Field tests in tropical Singapore demonstrated superior cooling performance compared with commercial white paints. Pilot-scale demonstrations highlighted consistent electricity savings under varying weather conditions, supported by theoretical modeling. By leveraging sustainable water evaporation and thermal radiation, this paint offers a practical and long-term solution for mitigating the urban heat island effect.

Carbonation induced corrosion is one of the major durability issues for reinforced concrete structures. To address this issue, it is essential to understand the underlying mechanism of carbonation by detecting the ingress of the CO₂ and carbonation depth quantitatively. This paper demonstrates the potential of Raman spectroscopy, as a powerful technique, to implement quantification analysis of cement paste carbonation. In present work, the correlation between the content of the CO₃²⁻ and the Raman peak intensity was initially established by using several standard specimens premixed with certain amount of CO₃²⁻. The established correlation was then used to investigate the carbonation of the cement paste in a CO₂ diffusion scenario, and the results show a good agreement with that obtained by thermogravimetry measurements. Therefore, the feasibility of the Raman spectroscopy to quantify the carbonation degree of the cement paste can be demonstrated.