{"id":245116,"date":"2026-10-09T02:54:06","date_gmt":"2026-10-09T07:54:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/heat-storing-gel-could-cut-buildings-energy-consumption"},"modified":"2026-10-09T02:54:06","modified_gmt":"2026-10-09T07:54:06","slug":"heat-storing-gel-could-cut-buildings-energy-consumption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/heat-storing-gel-could-cut-buildings-energy-consumption","title":{"rendered":"Heat-storing gel could cut buildings\u2019 energy consumption"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/heat-storing-gel-could-cut-buildings-energy-consumption2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Heating and cooling buildings account for a large portion of global energy use. A research team in the Texas A&amp;M University Department of Materials Science and Engineering was featured on the cover of <i>ACS Applied Materials &amp; Interfaces<\/i> for a <a href=\"https:\/\/pubs.acs.org\/aamick\/article\/18\/22\/30627\/5184204\/Hybrid-Polymer-Inorganic-Salt-Hydrate-Materials\" target=\"_blank\">study<\/a> that aims to reduce that energy consumption.<\/p>\n<p>The June 10 issue\u2019s cover art was designed around a class of materials that the research team is calling \u201csalogels.\u201d Salogels are gel-like hybrid materials that pair polymer structures with inorganic salt hydrates to store and release heat.<\/p>\n<p>Salt hydrates already store a large amount of thermal energy and have a high resistance to burning. This is why they work so well at storing heat during the day and releasing it at night. The main problem is that, on their own, they can leak and break down with repeated use. Introducing a polymer network or structure into them can resolve many of these concerns without sacrificing storage capacity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Heating and cooling buildings account for a large portion of global energy use. A research team in the Texas A&amp;M University Department of Materials Science and Engineering was featured on the cover of ACS Applied Materials &amp; Interfaces for a study that aims to reduce that energy consumption. The June 10 issue\u2019s cover art was [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1497,1635],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-245116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy","category-materials"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245116\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}