In Colorado, engineers working at the University of Colorado Boulder are developing a scalable, cost-effective greenhouse material that splits sunlight into photosynthetically efficient light and repurposes inefficient infrared light to aid in water purification with a $2.45 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Greenhouses have been used since the 1960s and remain the standard for effective plant productivity compared to open field agriculture. But the structures carry high energy costs, requiring tremendous amounts of energy for heating, ventilation, electrical lighting, and water for evaporative cooling.
“The new CU Boulder technology will take the form of a semi-translucent film that splits incoming light and converts the rays from less-desired green wavelengths into more desirable red wavelengths, thus increasing the amount of photosynthetically efficient light for the plant with no additional electricity consumption,” said Xiaobo Yin, an assistant professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering at CU Boulder.