rubenhernandez

Lowering Household Heating By Using Silver Chloide By: Ruben Hernandez

In North America many homes and businesses have unwanted solar heat gain in their east and west side windows. Some people waist 30 % of their money on buying new windows every year for homes cooling and heating expenses. Some businesses spend even more money on installing insulating materials to their windows. Silver chloride is a chemical compound that becomes a darker shade when it is exposed to sunlight. One of its most common uses is in the production of photochromic (transition) lenses. I wanted to see if silver chloride could have any other practical manufacturing purposes. To test this, I painted four boards of home siding with a silver chloride/paint clear coat mixture (one oil-based and one water-based), and put one board of each mixture in sunlight, and the other one indoors to see if there was any change in color. The boards I placed in the sunlight turned a much darker shade than the boards left indoors. When I put the sunlight boards back inside, they mostly returned to their original color, but they were not quite as clear. Even though the clear coat did not return 100% to its normal color, silver chloride could still have many functional applications.