??? Is it a good or bad idea to wax put car wax on your panels

westbranch

Re: ??? Is it a good or bad idea to wax put car wax on your panels

from their Photos page "Once the exterior was thoroughly cleaned and coated with Photocatalyst TiO2, without any additional maintenance, the building maintained its clean and shining appearance."

Now it is called a photo-catalyst...?

Google search >>http://www.greenearthnanoscience.com/what-is-photocatalyst.php
And it talks about exactly this process and the picture at the bottom of the page is WORTH a 1000 words!

What is Photocatalyst?

The word photocatalysis is a composite word which is composed of two parts, “photo” and “catalysis”. Catalysis is the process where a substance participates in modifying the rate of a chemical transformation of the reactants without being altered or consumed in the end. This substance is known as the catalyst which increases the rate of a reaction by reducing the activation energy.

Generally speaking, photocatalysis is a reaction which uses light to activate a substance which modifies the rate of a chemical reaction without being involved itself. And the photocatalyst is the substance which can modify the rate of chemical reaction using light irradiation.

Chlorophyll of plants is a typical natural photocatalyst. The difference between chlorophyll photocatalyst to man-made nano TiO2 photocatalyst (here below mentioned as photocatalyst) is, usually chlorophyll captures sunlight to turn water and carbon dioxide into oxygen and glucose, but on the contrary photocatalyst creates strong oxidation agent and electronic holes to breakdown the organic matter to carbon dioxide and water in the presence of photocatalyst, light and water.

inetdog

Re: ??? Is it a good or bad idea to wax put car wax on your panels

simagic wrote: »

This pigment is used extensively in plastics and other applications for its UV resistant properties where it acts as a UV absorber, efficiently transforming destructive UV light energy into heat..................................Another site says "It is also a major component of sun block to deter the absorption of ultraviolet (UV) rays from the sun, the concentration of which determines the product’s Sun Protection Factor, or SPF.... One site says UV absorber, the other site says deters the absorbtion. I don't know what to think, but I ordered it and I'll try it... I didn't see titanium oxide on the one I ordered from England

1. If you block only the UV from the panels, you may not reduce the amount of current produced much, at least not relative to the heat generated in the panel.
2. In a sunscreen, a UV absorber deters the absorption of that same UV by your skin, where it would be harmful. It would be even nicer if it just reflected the UV instead, but you take what you can get.

Cariboocoot

Re: ??? Is it a good or bad idea to wax put car wax on your panels

inetdog wrote: »

1. If you block only the UV from the panels, you may not reduce the amount of current produced much, at least not relative to the heat generated in the panel.
2. In a sunscreen, a UV absorber deters the absorption of that same UV by your skin, where it would be harmful. It would be even nicer if it just reflected the UV instead, but you take what you can get.

Along those lines, photographers use UV 'A' (and sometimes 'B') filters to block that part of the spectrum because whereas it isn't visible to our eyes it does affect colour rendition with both film and digital cameras. Some bugs, on the other hand, can see at least part of the UV spectrum; when it is included in a picture and rendered visible certain flowers look much different than they do to us.

Okay the old man is rambling ...

Photowhit

Re: ??? Is it a good or bad idea to wax put car wax on your panels

FWIW - I was not recomending Rain X glass cleaner, but rather the rain X windsheild washer fluid, which is already diluted. I did check and they specificly do not recomend using the glass treatment on solar panels! Likely just stay away from it, If you have older panels, it did help with dust.

On the photography end of things, morning glories are very suseptable to this effect rendering light purple are pink (or is pink as light purple)...

Back in my photography days, I'd had 81A's for all my lenses, nice warming effect. Alot of the 'UV' filters were little more than float glass, unless you went with B&W or a lens makers brand...