Chameleon Roofing Technology Made from Cooking Oil
Posted by Damien Cabral on Tue, Mar 23, 2010
Cool and Green roofing technologies have been out for years but continue to 
change rapidly. A new material from United Environment & Energy (UEE) claims to take cool roofing technologies to another level. Traditional cool roofing technologies reflect the sun’s rays (and therefore heat) from your roof to decrease cooling costs during the warmer months. The challenge with the traditional technology is it also reflects the suns rays during the winter months, when additional heat on your roof can be beneficial.
UEE claims to have solved this problem by inventing a coating that allows homeowners to gain efficiencies during both seasons. The coating is made from a cooking oil-based polymer, with molecules strung together in a long chain, that hardens into plastic. Change in temperature alters the coatings optical properties. The coating reflects the sun’s rays in warmer temperatures and absorbs the rays during colder temperatures. UEE claims that the cooking oil coating can reduce temperatures by up to 80% during the summer and increase temperatures by 80% during the winter (when compared to other cool roofing technologies).
"It will help save fuel and electricity and reduce emissions of volatile organic compounds from petroleum-based roofing products. In addition, it will provide a new use for millions of gallons of waste oil after it is used to cook french fries and chicken nuggets." - Ben Wen, VP of United Environment & Energy
Unfortunately, this technology isn’t expected to be ready for production until 2013. Moonworks provides conventional Cool Roofing Shingles in the Northeast, including Rhode Island (RI), Massachusetts (MA), and Connecticut (CT).
This is not the first smart roof technology to emerge in the past few months. MIT Invented a Color Changing Roof (click for a detailed blog article) recently as well. The heart of this discovery is a new roofing tile that changes color based on ambient temperature. The tiles turn white (reflecting the heat) when it is hot outside and turn black (absorbing the heat) when it is cold. The tiles have been shown to reflect up to 80% of the sunlight when white and 30% when they are black.
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