Ceramic Coatings are something fairly new in the paint industry, are they hype? Lets make some sense of the subject.
Ceramic as an ingredient for paint came into vogue about two decades ago. Some paint companies sprinkled ceramic powder into their paint and touted their Ceramic Coatings as “Space Age” MAGIC. The hype they sold was fanciful and loaded with phenomenal and astronomical claims.
It’s true – Ceramic is a heat dissipating compound. The space shuttle showed how effective it is at quickly dissipating thousands of degrees of heat from a surface. But once powdered ceramic goes into a paint formula or elastomeric coating matrix, the effect is different than you would find compared to a brick of ceramic on the underbelly of the Space Shuttle. It’s not Magic… it’s simply Physics.
Powdered Ceramic does not enhance coatings or paints. It’s an expensive filler pigment. But there is a type of Ceramic that can really add something to a formulation, Ceramic Microspheres!
Ceramic Microspheres are like minature thermos bottles and they are extremely effective in creating low density Ceramic Coatings. The lower the density, the less heat is transferred. Steel is dense and conducts heat well. Styrofoam is not dense and is a good insulator. Ceramic Coatings filled with ceramic microspheres are somewhere in between those other two substances.
But there’s even more.
Color is a huge determiner of heat buildup. A bright white coating reflects heat while a colored coating absorbs more heat. The best of both worlds comes from bright white Ceramic Coatings filled with Ceramic Microspheres. Very little heat is picked up by the white ceramic coatings and only a small fraction is passed through the low density coating. The combination of white and low density is where the magic is. No hype, just simple physics
Ceramic can make a difference. But not the way some sell it.