Tech
New Nanowire Clothing May Keep Us Warm While Reducing Energy Use
Catherine Griffin
First Posted: Jan 07, 2015 10:52 AM EST
As temperatures drop this winter, scientists are looking at new ways to keep us warm. Now, they've announced that they've created a new nanowire coating for clothes that can both generate heat and trap heat from our bodies better than regular clothes.
Nearly half of the global energy consumption goes toward heating buildings and homes. Keeping warm, though, comes at an environmental cost; it's actually responsible for up to a third of the world's total greenhouse gas emissions. Needless to say, creating warmer clothing could, potentially, help lower these emissions while still keeping people toasty.
In this case, the researchers decided to focus on people rather than the spaces that they live in. More specifically, they developed lightweight, breathable mesh materials that are flexible enough to coat normal clothes. When compared to regular clothing material, the special nanowire cloth trapped body heat far more effectively.
The coatings themselves are made out of conductive materials, which means that they can be actively warmed with an electricity source to crank up the heat. Essentially, you're wearing a portable heater.
Despite the fact that you walk around with your own heater, the materials also save energy. The scientists calculated that the thermal textiles could save about 1,000 kilowatt hours per person every year, which is about how much electricity an average U.S. home consumes in one month.
With that said, it will be quite some time before these materials are publically available. That said, the findings are an important step forward for materials research, and could represent a new way to keep warm when it's cold outside.
The findings are published in the journal Nano Letters.
For more great science stories and general news, please visit our sister site, Headlines and Global News (HNGN).
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First Posted: Jan 07, 2015 10:52 AM EST
As temperatures drop this winter, scientists are looking at new ways to keep us warm. Now, they've announced that they've created a new nanowire coating for clothes that can both generate heat and trap heat from our bodies better than regular clothes.
Nearly half of the global energy consumption goes toward heating buildings and homes. Keeping warm, though, comes at an environmental cost; it's actually responsible for up to a third of the world's total greenhouse gas emissions. Needless to say, creating warmer clothing could, potentially, help lower these emissions while still keeping people toasty.
In this case, the researchers decided to focus on people rather than the spaces that they live in. More specifically, they developed lightweight, breathable mesh materials that are flexible enough to coat normal clothes. When compared to regular clothing material, the special nanowire cloth trapped body heat far more effectively.
The coatings themselves are made out of conductive materials, which means that they can be actively warmed with an electricity source to crank up the heat. Essentially, you're wearing a portable heater.
Despite the fact that you walk around with your own heater, the materials also save energy. The scientists calculated that the thermal textiles could save about 1,000 kilowatt hours per person every year, which is about how much electricity an average U.S. home consumes in one month.
With that said, it will be quite some time before these materials are publically available. That said, the findings are an important step forward for materials research, and could represent a new way to keep warm when it's cold outside.
The findings are published in the journal Nano Letters.
For more great science stories and general news, please visit our sister site, Headlines and Global News (HNGN).
See Now: NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone