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Smog Busting Paint Breaks Down Noxious Gasses
jlechem writes "New Scientist is reporting a story about a new paint that can absorb noxious gas. According to the article the new paint is called Ecopaint. The substance is designed to reduce levels of the nitrogen oxides, collectively known as the NOx gases, which cause respiratory problems and trigger smog production. The paint's base is polysiloxane, a silicon-based polymer. Embedded in it are spherical nanoparticles of titanium dioxide and calcium carbonate 30 nanometres wide. Because the particles are so small, the paint is clear, but pigment can be added. The first paint to go on sale will of course be white."
I've been eating a lot of onions lately.. I NEED this paint!
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
would just paint the inside of my lungs, I may be able to jog in Toronto in the mornings.
Sure this sounds like great news. Here comes the science...
:-)
What happens when the paint is saturated? Sure it works to a point, but will additional coats of paint over revitalize production, or are we looking at a long term problem when the paint fails and begins soaking up noxious chemicals that could leak and cause a really nasty effect on the environment? Furthermore, did anyone read this sentence in the article and become slightly shocked? "The acid is then either washed away in rain, or neutralised by the alkaline calcium carbonate particles, producing harmless quantities of carbon dioxide, water and calcium nitrate, which will also wash away."
So it either causes acid rain, or it cleans the environment?
When your house has absorbed all the noxious gasses it can handle, simply declare the neighborhood low-rent and move to a new subdivision painted with a fresh coat of Ecopaint!
grammar-lesson free since 1999. (rescinded - 2005)
"a new paint that can absorb noxious gas"....
Just what I need... my house coated in noxious gas. I'm sure this stuff will give lead paint a run for it's money.
This will come in handy in the bathroom
... but somebody was going to say it ...
I know
This stuff is safe with no side effects. Won't cause cancer in humans. Safe if it gets into the groundwater, sewer, and streams? Tested for a long enough period of time in a wide enough number of uses to prove it is as safe and effective as normal paint base?
Just like when they used steel pipes in houses (which corrode from the inside out) rather than lead?
No thanks. I'll wait for proof before I paint even a bench with that stuff.
Clever. Very clever. It reminds me of the concept of the catalytic-converter car radiator coating which would eat atmospheric ozone; this one consumes ozone precursors, but WTF?
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Now, given the nature of the pain to absorb noxious chemicals, wouldn't we be seeing a problem of entire neighborhoods where the houses are literally big cubes of smog? Secondly, and this may be scientifically wrong, because it is just absorbing the NOx gases, not necessarily the smog itself, but isn't there a chance of discoloration of the paint after application? Would that beautiful white house become LA-brown within a couple years?
A paint that soaks up smog? I think we need to stop driving cars that pollute the air in the first place.
---
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These guys are putting together a free 3D action/adventure game.
Free Wii Points
Could this paint also be applied directly on pollution sources, such as on the inside of car tail pipes or the inside surface of smoke stacks?
That would seem like a more logical place to apply this paint, though applying it to roads and other surfaces probably doesn't hurt, either.
In 2002, after 7000 square metres of road surface in Milan, Italy, were covered with a catalytic cement, residents reported that it was noticeably easier to breathe - with the concentration of nitrogen oxides at street level cut by up to 60 per cent.
None of the usual "20% decrease in XYZ, 30% lower levels of ABC", plain and simple "it makes a difference noticeable to people".
Interesting technology, but the "paint will begin to discolor after approximately 5 years" may discourage widespread deployment.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
I seem to recall TO2 being a fairly nasty chemical to produce, using lots of Chlorine in production, etc. (Of course, high-school chem was a while back...) Is using the paint a net benefit to the environment? If not, what's the point?
In goes noxious gas (pun intended) and out comes a weak acid. Put a ring of limestone gravel or pavers around the base of the building and even that would be neutralized.
Of course the bigger question is if this paint and other materials like it are cheaper then catching the gasses closer at their sources, or at least ensuring those sources aren't so close to folk's lungs and other living creatures not appreciative of such.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Paint is often supposed to protect surfaces from corrosion. In this case the paint collects nitrous oxide gasses and makes nitric acid, a very corrosive chemical. The paint is porous so we can have nitric acid within the paint, perhaps even close to the surface you want to protect. Now will that nitrous acid destroy whatever the paint was supposed to protect? Perhaps a good coat of different, non-porous paint below this paint will protect the surface, but if there are any deep scratches at least they may corrode much faster due to nitric acid.
It is worth noting that the NOx from smog already forms nitric acid, which sticks to surfaces. Nitric acid is very "sticky" in this regard, and when it rains or the humidity gets very high, it corrodes the surfaces on which it has been deposited. This occurs even without the catalyst. In effect, the new paint won't be a big change- nitric acid will continue to be deposited, but at a higher rate- and preferentially on surfaces with the catalyst, which has a modest amount of calcium carbonate to neutralize the product.
On the bright side, if calcium carbonate is used for neutralization, the calcium nitrate is actually fertilizer. Yum for the plants.
If you read the article you'll see a nice and practically useless image where it shows that NOx is broken down to harmless stuff like water and oxygen. Don't ask me HOW exactly. Anyways, once the calcium carbonate runs out, the nitric acid will not be nuetralized. ( good read up on a chem textbook regarding bases ( like calcium carbonate ) and acids, especially how they affect eachother ) Having a whole load of acid building up inside your paint isnt a good thing but according to the article it will just discolour the paint. While the Titanium Oxide will happily continue to absorb more NOx and thus create more acid.
So basically, nowadays you have to paint once every 5 years because the smog attacks the paint. Now you have to paint once every 5 years because the paint attacks the smog.
Hate me!
I meant that when you have 5600 layers of this shit all over every city, are we looking at a serious problem? Yeah one layer works, but nobody knows what the long term effect of this will be, except us cynics, right? :-)
Bottom layer is an acid-sensitive primer, top layer is Ecopaint. When the buffering capacity of the Ecopaint is exhausted, the acid works its way down to the primer, which de-bonds. When the Ecopaint is peeling, it's time to power-wash and put on a new coat.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Hi! I'm Troy McClure, you might remember me from such educational films as "Lead Paint: Delicious But Deadly", "Firecrackers: the Silent Killer" and "Man versus Nature: The Road to Victory"
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Really, the places that have the highest concentration of vehicles - downtowns - seem to be almost entirely cement, glass, and brick. Out in the suburbs there's houses with paint on them, but there's not much pollution out there...unless you live in southern California. Cement might actually be more useful because there are more cement surfaces than painted surfaces in high-density parts of town.
The definition of a liberal: I may disagree with what you have to say, but I'll fight for your right to say it
The Titaninum oxide is a catalyst, so it is not consumed. The calcium carbonate is just there to neutralize the acid that is produced on the catalyst. So, the paint will never get sauruated with acids. I'll bet that they catalyst will keep working without the calcium carbonate & that the resulting nitric acid will just wash off, probably into some nearby concrete, which aso has a lot of calcium carbonate to neutralize the nitric acid. Besides, a little nitric acid isn't all that bad as a pollutant... you can safely wash it down the drain.
Think global, act loco
Well, you could start by RTFA. The titanium breaks down the gasses into nitric acid that is converted to harmless carbon dioxide, water and calcium nitrate by carbonate particles. These are then washed away by the rain. When the carbonate particles break down (five years in heavily polluted areas), the paint will keep converting the gas to nitric acid that still washes away.
Sounds like a great idea to me.
I think I need some of this in my shorts.
Must stop consuming so much curry and beer.
Never, ever lose a file again. Ever.
They should use this in a catalytic converter ... Rather than using an expensive reduction catalyst to produce gas, they could use the TiO to produce a little nitric acid (or salt if you add the Calcium carbonate). IF this would work, it might save some money ... Platinum is not cheap.
Think global, act loco
Along with the already mentioned rtfa, I should mention I am a chemist/materials...The real concern about these materials is the slowly accumulating data saying that there MIGHT be unforeseen medical issues with the particles used in the paint. As a substance, its invisible. TiOx is only White when its big enough. These are an order of magnitude smaller...totally transparent as long as the matrix material is. Otherwise: over time these materials will last longer and longer if they are used in a widespread manner as they will be able to bind the local discolorants and make them scoopable essentially....what some might see as a discolored paint should properly be considered as a akin to kitty litter. Replace when used.
The titanium dioxide is a catalyst. It catalyzes a reaction between NO2 and water to produce nitric acid, HNO3. This reacts with calcium carbonate, CaCO3 (basically chalk) in the paint to produce water, carbon dioxide, and calcium nitrate:
CaCO3 + 2HNO3 -> H2O + CO2 + Ca(NO3)2.
The titanium dioxide is not consumed in the reaction, but the chalk is, and when it runs out, your paint fills up with nitric acid, which is not good. However, the reaction that causes the formation of nitric acid happens at a slower rate on its own, it is one source of acid rain.
Calcium nitrate is not noxious; it's basically fertilizer. However, too much nitrate runoff will cause problems with excessive algae growth in water, which can drop the oxygen level low enough to kill fish. Just the same, there's a lot more nitrate runoff from farmers and lawns than you're likely to get from this stuff.
Just for the record, calcium carbonate (yes, it's the same stuff Tums is made of) is actually a buffer, not a base. Go grab yourself a litmus strip and several Tums. Crush the Tums up and dissolve them in a cup of water. Play with the litmus enough to convince yourself that your solution has a pH of 7.
But, yes, it does neutralize acids. Bases, too.
I used to work in a coal burning power plant where they are required to run catalytic scrubbers to remove some of the NO2 before releasing it. While walking above the boilers one day I inhaled a lungful of something noxious that about knocked me off my feet and the safety engineer later said it was probably an NO2 leak. It felt like a chemical burn in all my respiratory passages for days. Anyway that is an environment where NO2 gas is highly concentrated and the workers there could be partially protected by painting the offices, breakrooms, turbine rooms, etc. with this stuff.
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
Yes, and monkeys fly out of my but. Are you listening to Bush's scientists?
Hey, I even provided you a couple of links to check out to verify the claim.
Don't be so lazy. The information is out there.
And you should learn to separate politics from science. The two don't mix.
Racist manufacturers. :)
My favourite part of the article (with a different substance):
In 2002, after 7000 square metres of road surface in Milan, Italy, were covered with a catalytic cement, residents reported that it was noticeably easier to breathe - with the concentration of nitrogen oxides at street level cut by up to 60 per cent.
60% percent less nitrogen oxides in less than a year? Hell, coat my lungs with it. Even if if has to be reapplied every couple of years, it would be worth it to apply the cement version to streets, and roads and the paint version to buildings. Dunno about the whole discolouration thing, though.
Wonder how long it'll be now that we have photocatalytic paint before someone comes up with photovoltaic paint that can produce significant power? Even cooler if they could be combined.
Have you ever seen NO2? It's orange. It's a gas. It's an acid. It *is* smog. It's like the sixth most powerful acid of all acids or thereabouts (when mixed with water of course... producing nitric acid... H20 + NO2 --> H2NO3). The cool thing is that the right catalyst (cars have catalytic converters which do this, as well as get rid of CO) will turn it into harmless Nitrogen and Oxygen. The uncool part is that it's also easy to make, just mix Nitrogen and Oxygen (uh, like air) at high temperature and pressure (like in an engine).
No, it doesn't literally absorb gas.. It breaks NOx down with solar power and releases it as "carbon dioxide, water and calcium nitrate, which will also wash away."
The fact that the paint is trying to address environmental problems will probably make people have even greater worries about what chemicals it puts into the ground water etc..
People should realize that all paints and coatings end up in the environment.
I admit this is intriguing science. The most interesting thing about pollution reducing coatings to work, there will need to be a unique formula for each city. I live in a city where the worst pollution days happen in the dead of winter with temperature around 30 degrees farenheit. Other cities get bad during the heat.
It is an interesting science, but not a one size fits all science.
As a firefighter, I have to ask the question of what happens when it burns. If all these toxins are intentionally captured into the paint, are they released when it burns? Would this mean that people will have even less time to escape from a fire?
New Scientist is reporting a story about a new paint that can absorb noxious gas.
I heard that Darl McBride got the first stocks of this to paint on the wall facing his desk.
What happens if you huff this paint? Can the vapors from the paint absorb noxious gases as well as the paint itself can, and if so, is it enough to cancel out the fact the paint fumes are themselves noxious? Inquiring minds want to know.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
it in some way offers an alternate reaction path that is more favorable. Some catalysts work by providing a surface to which the reactants stick. I suspect that is what is happening here since making microbeads of titanium dioxide would maximize the surface area and thus the potential catalytic effect. By definition catalysts are not used up in the reaction that they catalyse.
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
-Tupshin
The way paint is sold today, all nearly paint is shipped to the store as a white base. The store is also machine that contains a rainbow of concentrated pigment colors. The various colors that are shown in paint chips equate to a formula of the concentrated pigments that need to be added to the base. A computer instructs the machine to squirt in the right pigments in the right quanities to make the requested color, the cover is hammered back on and then another machine shakes the paint to blend it. The cover is taken off, a dab of the paint is put on the color to mark what it is, and then the cover is placed back on, and it's ready to go.
So I highly doubt the only-in-white limitation on this will hold for very long...
Well...titanium dioxide is widely used in paints already...it certainly beats lead, though it can be considered a mild health hazard:
titanium dioxide
Calcium carbonate, even in large quantities in dust form is not considered more hazardous:
calcium carbonate
-Tupshin
Yes, but when the paint is new, the Nitric Acid is supposed to be absorbed by the calcium carbonate particles that are also embedded in the paint. This second reaction does use up the calcium carbonate (by converting it to calcium nitrate), and when this happens, the acid stays in the paint, discoloring it. This is supposed to happen after 5 years. So, in order to stay efficient, you need to repaint every 5 years.
I'd think I'd prefer ABS to loss of directional control when your steer tyres lock ;-)
On a slightly different subject, when ABS was introduced by the major manufacturers in Australia, they altered their ABS firmware so that the initial skid-after-lockup was a fraction longer, allowing the wheel to 'bite' down through loose gravel onto the road base. Otherwise the system would try and brake your vehicle using the loose gravel, with obvious poor effect. I've encountered this "rolling" effect of braking on loose gravel with early ABS systems and it's very disconcerting. Later systems are much better at it, that's for sure.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
The surface area of large SUV vehicles is far greater than that of small compact cars. Therefore, they can have a far greater positive impact on the environment when painted with this paint than the little pod cars.
Voila! I can see Detroit getting behind this paint bigtime.
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asbestos!
It is the miracle product of our time:
- It can't burn up, so you can use it to protect your house from fire. Think of it: no more fire in your home!
- It can be used to protect innocent firemen while extuingishing other nasty fires.
- You can process it in baby-clothing, to protect him/her from any harm !
- You can put it on the stove, so your food doesn't burn up!
Asbestos makes your life better !
...
Now that we know it's poisonous, that gives me a few questions about this product also: how do we know it doesn't harm us directly?
And er... does it have anything to do with red phosphourus ?
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
...we could slather on Congress and the Executive and see if they stop stinking up the place?
So then we instead have toxic paint after it's absorbed all those toxins, apparently everyone forgot about lead poisoning.
The smog that most people care about is ozone: ozone is formed from a cycle involved NOx, VOCs, (volatile organic carbons), light, and the hydroxyl radical (OH radical).
NO2 + hv -> NO + O
O + O2 -> O3
NO + O3 -> NO2 + O2
which would be a closed cycle, except you can skip the last step by doing:
NO + RO2(rad) -> NO2 + RO(rad)
where RO2(rad) is a result of the reaction of VOCs and OH(rad).
So taking NO2 out of the cycle will be great for reducing ozone production.
And yeah, the problem is not only that it is easy to make NOx with combustion, but that the more efficient your engine (in terms of burning less fuel for the same energy) the more NOx it produces (usually).
-Marcus