Playing outdoor sports has become unusually hot. Renowned foreign athletes recently contributed to a report claiming that excessive heat can pose protection hazards at this year’s Paris Olympics. Last month, the South American Football Confederation, following FIFA years earlier, officially updated its regulations to take into account the “increase in temperatures due to climate change. “These heat issues are poised to get worse as temperatures rise and more communities upgrade turf with synthetic turf that is less difficult to maintain. Although it is more durable, synthetic grass has a hard time absorbing and retaining. water, which ultimately leads to higher surface temperatures, reaching 170 degrees Fahrenheit.
Researchers at the KWR Water Research Institute in the Netherlands have tried to combat those sweltering turf temperatures by creating a new synthetic “evaporative cooling” curtain that can collect rainwater and use it to lower temperatures on a field’s surface. Week in Frontiers in Sustainable Cities, they found that surface temperatures on their traditional turf were 46 degrees cooler than those of fresh synthetic turf and close to the same temperature as grass. If implemented on a giant scale, researchers say this type of self-cooling turf could potentially reduce the risk of serious heat-related injuries and even help improve typhoon drainage in urban spaces where rainwater is not well absorbed through classic synthetic turf.
“The inclusion of a groundwater storage formula and a capillary irrigation formula in synthetic turf fields can result in a significant decrease in the surface temperature of traditional synthetic turf fields,” Marjolein van Huijgevoort, a hydrologist at the KWR Water Research Institute, said in a statement. Through circular water management in situ, below the field, a significant evaporative cooling effect is achieved. “
Natural grass is preferable to synthetic alternatives, either in terms of cooling and water drainage, as water can infiltrate the soil organically. However, sports fields, and even a growing number of parks, have turned to synthetic turf in recent years, due to its ease of maintenance. The researchers were encouraged by absorbing water through the turf and created their own turf with an open layer of water directly below the surface of the turf and the surprise platform. This layer of water captures and stores rainwater. Manufactured capillary cylinders Hydrophilic rock wool fibers are then used to send the water to the surface where it evaporates. Ultimately, the evaporated water cools the surface of the turf.
The researchers tested their self-cooled lawn compared to classic grass and grass grass on a hot, sunny summer day in the Netherlands in 2020. The surface temperatures of its self-cooling tower reached 98 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s hot, but it doesn’t compare to the classic. The most sensible thing about that is that the grass that cooled automatically had about the same temperature as the natural grass plot, which marked 101. 6 degrees Fahrenheit.
Although other studies have already looked at intermittent cooling of synthetic turf with sprinkler systems, this regularly only provides limited, short-term cooling relief. Constant watering can also impair or adjust the playability of sports turf. KWR studies say this new technique improves those efforts by storing herbal rainwater to cool a box when needed. Self-cooled turf would also have resulted in cooler temperatures on the surface of the box. In addition to cooling effects, studies say that water-absorbing pitch could also help decrease stormwater. drainage, which in turn could combat urban flooding. Poor drainage systems and excess concrete have reportedly contributed to the buildup of storm-related flooding in recent years.
The researchers say it’s undeniable that their new cooling formula can be implemented, though it’s not necessarily cheap. The installation prices of an auto-cooled court can also be about double those of a classic turf. And while the experiment focused on five small x five-meter patches of grass, real-world fields can also gently outshine them. Still, those early prices may only tell part of the story. Heatstroke and other fitness or agricultural damage resulting from poor drainage come with their own long-term prices that can theoretically also be mitigated by cooler, large-scale lawns.
“The investment required for a refrigerated box is greater than for a traditional box,” the researchers write. “This investment, however, allows the box to become part of the on-site water control regime and form a cooler, safer box for athletes, based on the grass-based evaporation of retained (rather than drained) rainwater.
Mack DeGeurin is a tech journalist who has spent years researching the issues of generation-politics collide. His work has previously been published in Gizmodo, Insider, New York Magazine, and Vice.
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