The Springwise top 5: innovations to beat the heat in 2024

Temperatures records are being broken around the world. How are innovators responding?

Last week, The Guardian reported that 15 national heat records have been broken so far this year – an unprecedented number. And this news comes off the back of several years of similar headlines. Just last month, on July 22nd, the world recorded its hottest day ever as measured by the surface air temperature averaged across the whole planet.

IS extreme heat on the rise?

When it comes to the human impact of heat, it’s not just about average temperatures – man-made climate change is making extreme heatwaves more likely. For example, the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group, a team of academic researchers from multiple institutions, found that recent heatwaves across the US and Mexico in May and June were made 35 times more likely by climate change. And this is no one-off. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has established that both average and extreme heat is on the rise on every content. Meanwhile, the WWA, which exists to rapidly assess the impact of climate change on specific extreme weather events, makes clear that every heatwave in the world today is made stronger and more likely by human-induced climate change.

What are the impacts of extreme heat?

Unfortunately, the rise of extreme heat has deadly consequences. According to the WHO, Heat stress is the leading cause of weather-related death, with data collected between 2004 and 2019 showing that there are nearly half a million heat-related deaths each year. Beyond the impact of mortality, extreme heat also has an impact on economies. The International Labour Organization, for example, forecasts that increases in heat stress will bring productivity losses equivalent to 80 million jobs by 2030.

Thankfully, many innovators around the world are developing solutions to help us cope with increasingly common heat extremes, and they are doing so without reaching for energy-intensive air conditioning systems. Read on to discover five of the most exciting.

HOW ARE INNOVATORS TACKLING HEAT STRESS?

Photo source Cryogenx

Emergency body cooling tackles heat stroke

Heatstroke causes organ damage and sometimes death when a person’s core temperature rises above 39 degrees Celsius and the body cannot cool down by itself. Ice water immersion is the most effective treatment for heatstroke, but it’s difficult to access in many situations and areas.

UK-based Cryogenx has created a portable body cooling device called the CGX1, which can provide life-saving treatment in these difficult-to-access locations. Likened to a “defibrillator for heat,” the CGX1 is lightweight, works without needing refrigeration, and does not need medical training for use.

The device consists of a body pack and a connected canister of non-toxic, non-flammable, and non-explosive gas that together, weigh around five kilogrammes. Once activated by the gas in the canisters, the non-toxic coolant stored in the body pack begins to rapidly reduce the body’s temperature.  Read more

Photo source A. James Clark/School of Engineering at University of Maryland

Multi-coloured paints that beat the heat

A research team at the University of Maryland, led by Liangbing Hu, has made a significant contribution to passive cooling technology through a novel coating that cools any building it’s applied to.

The composition of this coating enables it to combat the heat in two ways. First, it reflects away up to 99 per cent of incoming solar radiation, preventing a building from absorbing heat in the first place. At the same time, it also emits heat in the form of infrared radiation, dispelling it into space through a process known as radiative cooling.

To commercialise the technology, the researchers created a company called Ceracool. This spinoff has further optimised the coating, applying it in the form of paints that dry at ambient temperatures and reduce temperatures inside a building by between 3 and 10 degrees Celsius. White paint has long been deployed as a cooling technique, but Ceracool’s paints come in several colours, providing greater flexibility. Read more

Photo source University of Sydney

Personalised advice for staying cool in extreme heat

The Heat and Health Research Incubator at the University of Sydney is working to reduce the risks to communities of extreme heat, and one of its recent tools is the HeatWatch app, which provides personalised insights to help people stay safe in hot weather.

Users set their location to see the current heat health risk, which is listed as one of six categories ranging from minimal to extreme. Depending on the level of risk, the app lists suggestions for staying cool for both indoor and outdoor situations. The app also shows heat risk predictions for the next several days.

To personalise the heat health risk, users input data that includes age group, medications, applicable risk categories such as chronic illness or pregnancy and where they will be and what type of clothing they will be wearing. Read more

Photo source Cherry Cai, RMIT University

Could nanodiamond clothes help you beat the heat?

Researchers from RMIT Australia’s Centre for Materials Innovation and Future Fashion (CMIFF) have created a smart textile for clothing that cools down the wearer. The cotton textile is coated in nanodiamonds, an inexpensive substance that can be made from waste materials and is safe for the human body. The chemical structure of nanodiamonds is a carbon lattice similar to that of diamonds, but much smaller and with particularly strong thermal conductivity properties. It is this thermal conductivity that makes nanodiamonds so efficient at pulling heat away from the person wearing the fabric.

When compared to untreated fabric, the nanodiamond-coated clothing reduced the wearer’s temperature by two to three degrees Celsius. That is enough of a temperature difference to possibly delay or significantly lessen the amount of time an air conditioner is used. The treated textiles also demonstrated improved UV resistance, meaning wearers would be better protected against the sun as well as heat when wearing the clothing outside on hot days. Read more

Photo source Gan Huang, KIT

Could this glass alternative regulate building heat?

Maximising natural light in buildings is one way of saving on energy costs. However, using glass for roofs and walls also comes with problems, including glare and lack of privacy, as well as overheating in warm weather. Researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have now developed a possible solution.

Researchers at KIT’s Institute for Microstructure Technology (IMT) and Light Technology Institute (LTI) have created a polymer-based film that could replace glass. The film is made up of microscopic silicone pyramids – each one about one-tenth the diameter of a hair. The design allows the film to provide light diffusion and radiative cooling while also maintaining a high level of transparency. Plus, the material is also hydrophobic and self-cleaning.

Researchers tested the material in the lab and in real-world conditions and found that it achieved six degrees Celsius of cooling, compared to the ambient temperature. Read more

To discover more cooling innovations and thousands of other innovation case studies, explore our library today.

Written By: Matthew Hempstead