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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 (rescinded - 2005)
This will come in handy in the bathroom
... but somebody was going to say it ...
I know
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?
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!
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.
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
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.
Hey, and that crap they threw into gasoline, yup that was safe.
Asbestos was a really nice fire retardent material. Too bad it had a tendency to create dust that causes lung cancer.
And to cap it all off, let's have 3 cheers for air bags and anti-lock brakes. If you are a small-fry like my wife and myself, you too can be killed in a 10mph impact by a piece of safety equipment! Anti-Lock brakes, they actually increase breaking distance and if you pump them (like anyone over the age of 26 was trained to do) you are screwed.
You really start to understand why people in ages past were so resistant to change.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
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.
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).
You really start to understand why people in ages past were so resistant to change.
Yeah. Far better to leave the smog in the air where it belongs.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
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.
Please, do not spread this FUD.
.au only deploy above 60km/h because they expect the seatbelt to be doing it's job keeping the occupant in the seat in minor impacts. Airbags in the US deploy a lot slower because they can't predict whether someone is using a belt or not. Anyway, airbags only deploy so far into the cabin - make sure you're not hurtling unrestrained towards the windshield and you'll be fine (if a bit shaken / bruised).
;-)
If you are a small-fry like my wife and myself, you too can be killed in a 10mph impact by a piece of safety equipment!
Wear your damn seatbelt. Airbags in
Anti-Lock brakes, they actually increase breaking distance and if you pump them (like anyone over the age of 26 was trained to do) you are screwed.
Antilock brakes allow you to steer your way out of (and possibly avoid) an impending accident. Most people's reflexes are to keep pressing that brake pedal until you stop. Train yourself away from pumping the pedal - ABS can pump that pedal a lot faster than you can. They are also multi-channel, and can yield considerably more braking effort from each wheel than you, eg two wheels off the edge of the road on dirt. So unless you have four brake pedals in your car, you , by yourself, have very little chance of getting a shorter braking distance than your antilock brakes can. (Yes, special circumstances apply).
I would buy the car with ABS and airbags, because those two technologies would significantly improve my chances of survival in day-to-day driving.
And here ends my little rant for the day
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
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
Anti-Lock brakes, they actually increase breaking distance and if you pump them (like anyone over the age of 26 was trained to do) you are screwed.
Anti-lock breaks increase stopping distance over properly-executed threshold breaking, but I think it's terribly naive to claim that the general population is good at threshold breaking. Anti-lock breaks are a lot better for stopping than non-anti-lock breaks, if you lock your wheels. It's that whole static- versus dynamic-friction thingy.
And as for airbags and seatbelts causing injuries in crashes, it's true. They can. But guess what: it's statistically impossible for auto-makers to install saftey features that protect every possible driver from every possible impact. (well, the one saftey feature that would work is the "car-with-no-engine" feature. It never gets into accidents). So clearly, if airbags and seatbelts save more lives than they cost, they are worth having. And if you're so small that your airbag is always a danger to you, you can have it disabled (I have a friend, who is a dwarf, and her airbag is disabled, with a key, so that if a normal-sized person drives her car, it can be turned back on).
Just because a potential technology has a downside doesn't mean it's worthless and we should shun it. Nothing is free; just do the cost-benefit analysis and pick whichever has the best ratio.
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...
Get a modern car with dual stage airbags. My mom is small and sits very close to the steering column but I have very little fear of her being hurt by it because her chair contains a sensor that notifies the airbag deployment circuitry of this and so it will go off with apropriate force.
Most of the anti-ABS whacko's shut up when Car and Driver had some of the worlds top racecar drivers do a shootout with a vehicle which had ABS factor, they had one of their editors do a 0-60-0 run with ABS, then had 5 drivers try to beat his distance with the ABS disabled, only Michael Schumaker was able to do it, if only one of five pro drivers can beat ABS what does that tell you about mere mortals?
As to the OP, TiO2 is ALREADY in almost all paint. Most paints sold anymore are latex polymer (much better than oil based paints with volatile organics if you are worried about cancer) and calcium carbonate isn't going to cause anything cancer.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
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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