Temperature responsive shading solution for greenhouse climate control

到2050年，世界需要多生产50%的粮食来养活届时将达到近100亿的人口。与此同时，由于城市化和气候变化的影响，可耕地在过去40年中减少了30%。我们必须提高现有可耕地的生产力，以确保我国人民今后的粮食安全。在Albotherm，我们正在开发温室涂料，可从透明可逆地转变为白色，以便在炎热的天气中为作物提供遮阳，从而实现无电输入的内部温度调节。与标准遮阳相比，我们的技术可以增加光照水平，估计产量增加高达25%。对英国来说，这意味着每年将多生产578，200吨粮食。此外，英国温室冷却中使用的风扇每年消耗2.35亿千瓦时的能源，相当于大约55，000吨二氧化碳排放量。我们的技术有可能减少81%的风扇使用，节省44，500吨二氧化碳，并帮助园艺行业向净零排放转变。这是一个技术可行性项目，将利用我们现有的技术开发一种特定的，可定制的产品，用于商业温室。我们目前的创新是一种涂层，在加热时从透明变为反射白色，导致温度相关的阴影。我们的核心知识产权是一种活性成分，添加到透明水性涂料中，以在可工程化的转变温度下实现可逆的不透明性。该项目将使我们能够将该原型开发成市场上可逐渐着色的产品，耐用，可根据每种作物的最佳生长对特定的热量和光照要求进行定制，以提高作物产量。通过对我们第一代系统的这些改进，然后，我们将能够与我们的合作伙伴Vitacress（英国的草药生产商）和Flavour Fresh（英国的浆果和番茄种植商）一起量化我们的涂料性能和在商业温室中的耐久性。在此项目期间，我们还将与我们的合作伙伴Pilkington合作，测试产品试用的耐用性和扩展应用能力。

The world needs to produce 50% more food by 2050 to feed a population that will reach nearly 10 billion in this time. Meanwhile arable land has decreased by 30% in the last 40 years due to the effects of urbanisation and climate change. It is essential that we increase the productivity of the arable land we have available to ensure future food security for our population.At Albotherm, we are developing greenhouse coatings that reversibly transition from transparent to white to shade crops in hot weather, allowing internal temperature regulation without electrical input. Our technology can increase light levels compared to standard shading, giving an estimated yield increase of up to 25%. For the UK this would mean up to 578,200 tonnes of extra food produced each year.Moreover, the use of fans in cooling UK greenhouses accounts for 235 million kWh of energy each year, which equates to roughly 55,000 tonnes of CO2 emitted \[4,6\]. Our technology has the potential to decrease the use of fans by 81%, saving 44,500 tonnes of CO2 and helping the horticultural industry's shift towards net-zero emissions.This is a technical feasibility project which will take our existing technology and develop a specific, customisable product for application in commercial greenhouses.Our current innovation is a coating that changes from transparent to reflective-white when heated, resulting in temperature-dependent shading. Our core IP is an active ingredient, that is added to transparent water-based coatings, to achieve reversible opacity at an engineerable transition temperature.This project will allow us to develop this prototype into a market-ready product that is gradually shading, durable and customisable to the specific heat and light requirements for optimal growth of each crop in order to improve crop yields.With these improvements to our first-generation system, we will then be able to quantify our coatings performance and durability in commercial greenhouses with our partners Vitacress, a herb producer in the UK and Flavour Fresh a berry and tomato grower in the UK. During this project, we will also collaborate with our partners Pilkington to test the durability and scale-up application capabilities for product trials.