Ithaca company creates, pilot tests cold-emitting film

ITHACA, N.Y. — Imagine being able to walk into a hardware store and purchase a film that, when applied to a window on a hot summer day, not only blocks the sun’s heat but actually emits cold.

Heat Inverse, LLC of Ithaca could make that a reality with its thin-film technology that gets cold without any additional energy. Founded in 2018 by CEO Romy Fain, the business began pilot testing its product earlier this year.

The product is applied like a sticker, Fain says, and “wherever you put it, it’s going to cool that service.”

It has promising implications for a number of sectors including refrigerated trucking and the power grid, Fain says. For refrigerated trucks, the film applied to the roof provides additional cooling, but it goes beyond that, she says. The film can also be applied to the cooling equipment, which generates waste heat as it runs, and keep that system cooler and operating more efficiently.

In the power system, the film has a number of potential uses, Fain says. It can be applied to actual components that experience a lot of heat degradation during use, and it can also be used on energy storage facilities to cool them. Studies have shown reducing temperatures by 10 degrees on power systems can double their lifespan, she notes.

The films are hyper-emitters selectively emit where the atmosphere is transparent. The film uses the temperature differential between the surface of the planet (heat) and outer space (cold) and, following the second law of thermodynamics where heat travels from hot to cold, the material gets and emits cold.

Heat Inverse calls it the reverse-greenhouse effect and the result involves heat being whisked away instead of being trapped in the atmosphere. It’s all about battling climate change in a way that’s durable and scalable, Fain contends. “What we really need are solutions we can implement quickly,” she notes.

The pilots that Heat Inverse began earlier this year are going well, Fain says. The company has one pilot program with a peaker plant in California. A peaker plant is a power plant that typically only operates during high, or peak, demand for energy. Plant officials went into the pilot a little jaded, Fain says, but ended up impressed by the product.

“We’re seeing these companies we’re pilot testing with are now ready to implement,” Fain adds. She anticipates the firm could start generating sales as soon as next summer.

“We’ve got hundreds of potential customers in the pipeline,” she says. Currently, the company has about 90,000 square feet of film that should be ready for sale by then, minus about 5 percent needed for additional pilot programs.

“We think this is going to be something people can buy at the hardware store and put it wherever they need to cool,” Fain says.

Supply-chain issues, which delayed the beginning of pilot testing, continue to be an issue, Fain says, so the company is working to shore up its supply chain, as well as bring some production in house.

With that in mind, Heat Inverse is looking for both space and manufacturing equipment, she says, and working with contractors that can do large-scale manufacturing. The company currently operates from the Rev: Ithaca Startup Works business incubator shared workspace.

Heat Inverse currently has eight employees, uses several consultants, and is actively interviewing for multiple positions at the moment.

The company has received funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Innovation Corps (I-Corps), including funding for customer discovery and $1 million in technology support.