PPG Industries recently announced its industrial coatings business has received $224,000 from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to help develop dark-colored pigments for cool metal roof and façade coatings that incorporate near-infrared (NIR) fluorescence and reflectance to improve energy performance. The award is part of a $530,000 project that includes a $250,000 award to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) to partner with PPG on the research and $56,000 in cost-sharing by PPG.

The new pigment technology under investigation would reportedly be a significant advance over current cool-coating pigments. PPG and Berkeley Lab estimate that cool coatings based on the new pigment technology could achieve effective solar reflectance (ESR) values of 0.5-0.7, compared to ESR values of 0.1-0.3 for standard pigments. An ESR improvement of 0.4 and widespread deployment of coatings with these pigments for residential applications in warm and hot areas of the U.S. could reportedly save up to $1.3 billion annually in related energy costs.

For more information, visit www.ppgindustrialcoatings.com.