Field demonstrated extended Graetzian viscous dissipative thermo-photonic energy conversion with a blended MgO/PVDF/PMMA coated glass-PDMS micro-pillar heat exchanger

Chilled water harvesting is a fundamental application of passive radiative cooling and promotes energy conservation for space cooling in buildings potentially, which relies on well-designed radiative cooling materials and heat transfer interface. This paper reports a scenario leading to viscous dissipative thermo-photonic energy conversion, which takes place in low Peclet number regime of an order of magnitude of 10⁰, where heat transfer is non-Graetzian. Compared to benchmarked glass-polydimethylsiloxane radiative cooler and barium sulphate coating, a newly developed trinary micro-porous 32/4/4 magnesium-oxide/poly(vinylidene-fluoride)/poly(methyl-methacrylate) radiative cooling blend, featuring high atmospheric window emissivity and solar reflectivity, both exceeding 97%, demonstrated a superior cooling performance with additional temperature reduction of 1.6 °C at daytime. Meanwhile, it chilled water at a flow rate of 6.3 µL/s by 1.3 °C upon coating on a glass-polydimethylsiloxane micro-pillar heat exchanger. Quantitative evaluation on the chilled water capacity was carried out at nighttime when the system ran pseudo-steadily. Cooling power measurement on a radiative cooler of same materials recorded a cooling power of 134 W/m² which is close to the ideal limit. And measured water temperature reduction and cooling efficiency were 2.5 °C and 6.3% respectively. They were significantly lower than the saturation limit. Degraded thermal and energy conversion performances, attributive to extended Graetzian viscous dissipation, were discussed theoretically. © 2023