The Albedo of Pervious Cement Concrete Linearly Decreases with Porosity

Pervious pavements have been advocated as a potential countermeasure to the urban heat island effect. To understand if pervious pavements stay cooler than conventional pavements, the albedo of the pervious concrete must be understood. This study measured the albedo of pervious concrete with different porosity. Four Portland cement concrete mixes were casted, using designed amounts of sand to vary the porosity of the pervious concrete samples. The samples were sliced and the spectral reflectance and albedo of the sliced samples were measured and analyzed. It is found that the albedo of pervious concrete decreases linearly with the increase of the porosity. The albedo of a pervious Portland concrete varies from 0.25 to 0.35, which is 0.05~0.15 lower than the albedo of conventional cement concrete. Due to this lower albedo, it should be cautious to develop pervious concrete to battle with urban heat island unless the evaporation of pervious concrete is promoted to compensate the additional solar absorption caused by the low albedo.