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Self-Cleaning Buildings to Fight Smog
bryan8m writes "Using technology already available for self-cleaning windows and bathroom tiles, scientists hope to paint up cities with materials that dissolve and wash away pollutants when exposed to sun and rain. The idea: UV rays hitting the titanium dioxide coated cement and concrete trigger a catalytic reaction that destroys the molecules of pollutants, including nitrogen oxides."
Wouldn't it be smarter to cover the buildings with solar panels, use that to power half the building and cut down of the amount of smog created by the power plants instead? Your car puts out NOTHING compared to a 250Mw coal plant.
-- Please insert another quarter
but I would like it in a body spray
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't this just change where the pollution ends up? I imagine producing the chemicals that naturally react with pollutants would be a rather toxic process itself. Cities wouldn't be so bad, but all the waste would have to go somewhere.
-ShadowRanger
the way to fight polution is at the source. stop corporations from producing polution. if that is done, then the people won't have to spend tax dollars cleaning up the mess.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Sounds great. At least now we can die in good-looking houses. How about reducing the damned pollution?!
...and what happens when the material has reacted away to the point where it does barely anything?
Bo-Erik Eriksson, head of research at Cementa, another company participating in the Swedish-Finnish project, said the byproducts of the reaction, called photocatalysis, are benign, though it depends on what substances are involved: Organic compounds are broken down into carbon dioxide and water, while the nitrogen oxides yield nitrate salts.
Carbon dioxide and water are easy enough to take care of. Not sure what to do with the nitrate salts. Fertilizer?
The rationale here being the DC will ionize the air, charging the impurities, thereby encouraging them to head for and adhere to these pollution-destroying buildings.
Incidentally, ionizing the air is NOT a new concept. Its been happening in nature since Earth began... especially during thunderstorms when the air is so charged it breaks down - we call it lightning.
I have often wondered if dirgibles, charged from being moored to the business end of a large vandergraff generator ( several stories tall ) would do the trick.
If a small electrostatic generator drops the crap out of the air in a room, would a bigger one clear stagnant air over an entire city... such as the Los Angeles basin?
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
Seems to make more sense to cut off the sources of the polution than to remove them from the environment. Improving engine efficency and adding proper safty equipment to power plants will do far more than coating everything in sight with titanium oxide. The self cleaning properties may be enough of a reason to use the coatings so the polution fighting is simply a side benefit. Why aren't the offenders held accountable for the polution in the first place? If power companies and auto companies were required to clean up their own messes their profits would disappear overnight. Nuclear power is generally referred to as the cheapiest cleaniest source but that's mostly because the US government generally picks up the clean up bill. The nuclear clean up programs are running billions of dollars a year with no end in sight. Oil companies are releasing massive amounts of hydrocarbons a year with no accountability. Alternative sources will start looking cheap when the government stops picking up the bill for cleaning up coal, oil and nuclear messes. Secondary costs of health care, global warming and clean up aren't ever factored into costs of energy. If sea levels rise five feet due to global warming the world will loose trillions of dollars in coastal property. Depreciate that cost into your gallon of gas.
Save a tree, use both sides of toilet paper.
Traffic is the primary cause of pollution in inhabited areas and car emissions are harder to control than those of a single 250 MW coal plant.
The owls are not what they seem
It's not about cleaner houses, it's about cleaner air!
They try to make a house work like a tree to actively reduce the amount of pollution in the air. That the house stays clean is just a nice side-effect
See pictures of tits
Yes, but does it run linux?
Seriously, though..
This seems like a great idea. However, after scanning the article and seeing the amounts of money involved with this solution I'm wonder if the 'bottom line' will get in the way of this. Especially here in the states. It's a sad truth that when it comes down to it, money talks.
and reduce the pollution? Technologies like this just make it seem like pollution is alright. Out of sight, out of mind.
How about buildings with living roofs or use solar panels and wind turbines to reduce reliance on the local smog producing powerplant.
Or move on over to and build a community to reuse energies wasted by other nearby businesses (like the heat that would otherwise be lost through restaurant ovens can be used to help heat the floor above, etc).
Or, you know... we can just pretend it is not there. Either way...
why don't we have cars that run on some energy source other than gasoline?
how hard is it to put a solar panel on top of a car that charges a battery. how many miles could a car get on a typical day? 50? 100? or maybe have a secondary power source that helps charge the batteries when there is not enough sunlight.
i would not mind having an emergancy gas tank, so if there is no sunlight, or it is a long trip, we won't be limited to a short distance. but for daily driving to and from work, or for the run to the grocery store, we don't need that much power.
this might require smaller cars that use less power, no more SUV's. i remember about a decade ago geo made a car that got 50 mpg. if that car had solar power in addition to the gas, maybe the avarage mpg would be in the 70's or 80's or higher.
your idea about solar panels on buildings is good too. other ideas might include removing all conventional lighting and replacing it with lower wattage lights. i saw a house that replaced the light bulbs with fluorescent lights, and the bill shrunk by more than half.
this reminds me of another idea. a few years ago a friend was showing off his new watch. it did not have a battery, instead it had some kinetic power source. as he explained it, everytime he moved, that charged his watch. if people can make a watch without a battery, then i am sure there must be some way to make a car that requires little or no gas, and is very cheap to operate. what other kinds of motors are there?
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Can I put this stuff on my car (-:
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
A factory that cleans like a cat, acts like a cat, so don't expect it to produce anything for 18 hours a day.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
Outside of certain cities, such as Athens and Tehran, motor pollution is not such an issue anymore, as we all have catalytic convertors fitted to our cars (at least we do in the EU). Unfortunately, its still pumping out CO2. What is required is a catalyst which turns CO2 into Carbon and Oxygen. Unfortunately outside of plants and trees we don't have one. I suspect the worlds largest polluter will have to do better than this.
"XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, use more." - Anonymous Coward
What about other pollutants? What about every pollutant? Look, I'm not nearly qualified to get into the science of this, but there is a lot to account for in this kind of research. Throw some plastic bags and some newspapers in the incinerator, and one of the byproducts will likely be dioxins, one of the most toxic substances there is. Dangerous non-linear consequences to waste/pollution "solutions" are frequent, because the research is often cursory at best, and people want their particular "solution" to succeed.
Of course, this could be completely safe. But the article did not exactly inspire joyful optimism in me. When we try to slap a band aid on an obvious problem (rampant air pollution), we often end up with serious unexpected new problems.
Neat idea, but I wonder how long before someone cries out it would render jobless all those fearless people cleaning the skyscrapers from the outside on those tiny scaffolds.
Sounds like a great a idea. Breakthrough. Revolutionary.
Until you learn that *the* major component of nearly all variants of white paint *already is* Titanum Dioxide. See for yourself how effective this method is.
So what are they going to to? Make the white houses even Whiter? Demand that all Windows be also covered in opaqe White layers?
you must be new here!
I Killed Your Cat
seriously.
He isn't responding to anything in the article. Is making inflamitory comments, and bringing up a differnt topic.
Sounds good, where can I get some? :)
Pollution causes decreased life span and quality of life. Whether you (or even your parents) lived in a clean environment or a polluted one, can determine whether you'll have all sorts of allergies, cancer, respiratory tract diseases etc. Even if you regularly check for cancer and catch each one in time, try to prolg your lifespan with antioxidants and reduced intake of calories, pollution will still get you: you may attain longer life, but with much reduced mental capacity or even dementia.
So, if you're a geek and you value your grey matter, you'll take pollution seriously.
In my view, one of the best ways around pollution is greater use of public transportation (expecially trains and such) - this is a problem in the US, where the existing public transportation companies have been bought and dismantled shortly after WWII - and greater utilization of nuclear, hydro, solar and wind power plants for production of electrical energy.
Sigged!
Better not lean against these babies then I guess...
Not that many trees get to be 300 years old since they have somewhat set lifespans just like almost every other living organism (some exceptions: sea turtles, etc). But if you are logging a forest properly you take out trees that are in their late maturity phase before they go into decline. This help keeps parasites and diseases low among the tree population.
Quite a long-frequency one though...
Interesting factoid of the day:
About 3 million people die every year from air pollution. That's about an order of magnitude greater than the number of people who have died in the entire history of nuclear power and nuclear weapons, including Chernobyl, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki.
However, if you ask a random person which causes more deaths, what do you think they'll say?
Put a tax on carbon based fuel sources. Start at 1%. Then increase it by 1% each year.
Deleted
Every good perpetuum mobile is covered with a catalyst that turns CO2 int C and O2.
It would make more sense to advocate roof gardens, street trees, and vines. These would have similar effects, but function more efficiently. Plants have the added advantage of making environments desirable to humans.
Eh, saw it months ago on the International Channel, but it was the Japanese who where working on it. Another thing they were working on was a substance that attracts impurities in water and becomes hard for easy removal. Poor girls testing the "filtered" water, though water did start dark and ended up crystal clear.
Find several hundred square kilometers of unused space. Process the land until it is fit to support plantlife.
Create a large forest.
Why would it work?
Because trees are the biggest fucking CO2 processors. Heck, keep some UV lamps on them during nighttime and you can probably avoid some of the CO2 generation.
Or find a way to put them up in the arctic; nearly 24/7 sunlight. ^.^
Goten Xiao
Bahhh hate smog, hard to breath and make buildings dirty. Solution mask and self cleaning buildings.......erhh just why not get rid of smog instead?
now when are they going to make self cleaning rooms :) .... i so badly waiting for one such innovation.
^_^
Titanium dioxide is the world's primary pigment for providing whiteness, brightness and opacity
History of Titanium Dioxide Whites
My house, like many others in England, is partly covered with a cement rendering and painted with white paint that uses Titanium dioxide pigment.
Cement Rendering
Sorta reminds me of the movie with Jack Black, Envy.
...brb, gotta take a call on my tumor causing cellphone. :-I
If the some of the dirty toxic polluted water just washes off, it HAS to collect somewhere. I didn't see anyone mentioning ways of actually eliminating it ALL.
I can just picture a water source near these buildings getting filled up even more with pollutants because of the washoff.
Hell, for all we know 30 years down the road we could find that Titanium Dioxide was harmful to SOMEthing itself.
http://www.UnFiction.com http://www.ARGN.com http://www.ImmersionUnlimited.com http://www.Linux-SP.com
But just wait until these buildings decide that it's the HUMANS inside of them that are the main source of the dirt/mess on and inside.
Then the buildings band together to start the extermination of the human race!
STAY AWAY FROM THE BUILDINGS.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
I do one better by fighting polution by smiling. Please join! TiO2 particles from my toothpaste remain in my mouth. As long as I expose my teeth to UV, the polution is degraded. This system is superior, because there are more people than buidings, and people breathe air, effectively passing the poluted air along the katalyst support (my teeth, that is). Hey, wait, this could be turned into 4 (for newcommers, that's profit). Protect your body and lungs from dangerous polution. Use my brand of toothtpaste, with extra TiO2 (new formula)
Helps against bad breath too, when odors go in the other direction.
Bert
Who said inventing is difficult?
I have never understood why the feds do not do a tax for 10 years, where each year the tax would rise by a set amount. Had we done that back in the 90's (or better in the 80's), we would have nothing but high mileage cars running around.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Which in no way negates the idea of buildings providing their own power.
I don't thinkthis stuff is going to do much more than keep buildings clean. FTA: "Trying to clean up air pollution seems to me to be a stretch," said Reynaldo Barreto, a chemistry professor at Purdue University in Indiana. "It doesn't mean it can't be done. But there's an awful lot of air and not a whole lot of surface."
San Francisco Photographers
'Polution' is an *externality*. It is an example of a market failure, in this case 'cuz the cost of the pollution is not incorporated into the product cost. It is perhaps (after national defense) one of the most defensible activities for 'The Government(tm),' as it it something that really cannot be done by 'The People(tm).' Don't confuse the fact that you don't agree with environmental extremists with the fact that the polluters (and the individual consumers) do not inherently 'see' the costs of the pollution. The fact is that the costs (as difficult as they are for us even to attempt to quantify) are spread on a far larger population than the consumers of a given product. You could even argue that in a 'free market' like 'we' have a corporation couldn't ethically or legally take steps to reduce pollution sans regulation.
Reduce, reuse, and recycle, while it sounds nice, is not so different than enforcing pollution controls on producers- its just a lot harder and more expensive to enforce. (FWIW R/R/R is by definition grossly distorting, which is the economic arguement against regulation and taxation. It is far better to have consumers make purchase decisions based on the real costs than force arbitrary lifestyle changes upon them. )
PS People shop at walmart, and you think they will voluntarily become granola eating cloth diaper using bike riding types?
It'd be nice if this stuff cleaned the "artwork" painted on by the spraycan community...
The titanium dioxide particles are only a few nanometers wide. The whole power of nanoscale approaches like this one is that nanoparticles often have unique properties which they do not possess in larger particle sizes, due to the very high surface-to-volume ratio and/or limited electronic states available. In this case, TiO2 becomes reactive.
What nobody has said for some reason is that an otherwise harmless material is not necessarily harmless at the nanoscale, so you have to go back and do toxicology studies all over again. And furthermore, nanoparticles are so small that they can penetrate and embed themselves even within your living cells, where since they are minerals they may not be degraded.
In fact, TiO2 nanoparticles have been documented to be toxic. Embedding them in the surface of buildings puts them in a position where they are likely to wear off into the atmosphere or runoff water.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
I think that I speak for nearly everyone here when I say: Hanh?
Recently I purchased some light bulbs that are coated with Titanium Dioxde from a company called Fresh2 http://www.fresh2.com/. I think they work pretty well, I put one over my catbox and when I can convince my wife to leave the light on, it does a good job of removing odors. --jdan
Congratulations, you're only a step or two away from creating the world's first self-exploding skyscraper!
If you manage to blow up a sky scaper with a couple of ounces of nitrate explosives, I think I'd sue the architect and building contractor.
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
But aren't windows a huge security problem? Indeed, some unauthorized personnel could smash them with a rock, and gain access to the building!
Anyone know if the polution removed by this paint outweighs the polution created to manufacture it?
This too, will end.
used in glitter and shampoo
Yes, because the 'environment' is just some fluffy tree hugger concept.
So you don't need clean air to breath, or clean water to drink? Then you should sale your system to NASA, they're looking for actually what you offer.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Or we could just open up some new nuclear plants and have a stable energy source while getting rid of the coal/oil ones altogether...
And where do you put the nuclear wastes? Especially now that as the admin likes to say, terrorists are trying to get it.
FalconShould there be a Law?
A better idea would be to plant rooftop gardens, and hang cylindrical turbines off the sides of buildings. Cities act like big wind tunnels between tall buildings, cylindrical turbines could be used to turn this air into power for the building whilst the garden on the top helps buffer some of the pollution and generally make a nicer place.
Rooftop gardens also act to reduce the heat island effect. Not only do they absorb carbon dioxide but they also help keep buildings cooler in warm weather thus reducing the need for airconditioning.
FalconShould there be a Law?
If we had a place to send nuclear material that was past useable like the Yucca site this would not be a problem
No problem with Yucca Mt? Hah ha. Yucca Mountain is a geologically unstable site. A government building was even damaged there in the 1970s from an earthquake. Studies have also shown contaminated water can travel many miles from there. The only reason Yucca was chosen over other sites is because of politics, Nevada has less political muscle than other potential sites. Also though it rarely comes up Yucca is part of a reservation by treaty and like many treaties the government decided to break this one too.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Great... now we can drive through clouds of carcinogenic Titaniun Dioxide smog.
Trading one toxin for another, how short sighted, but hey... we'll have cleaner roadways as we die of cancer.
the way to fight polution is at the source. stop corporations from producing polution. if that is done, then the people won't have to spend tax dollars cleaning up the mess.
Actually in the US the government is the biggest polluter and the government exempts itself from many environmental laws. It's the same elsehere, the old Soviet Union generated a lot of pollution. Lake Baikal in Siberia was heavily polluted and the lake holds 20% of the world's fresh water. One source of pollution is a paper mill in Baikalsk which was first planned in 1954.
FalconShould there be a Law?
How's it a free economy when corporations are given power by the state to take from public property with no recourse for others who have a stake in this public property?
There isn't a free market economy as Adam Smith envisioned in The Wealth of Nations . It hasn't existed in a long tyme. What we have is the Corporate Aristocracy Thomas Jefferson warned of in 1814.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Skanska expert: No problem, I'll just run into the tunnel with my solar powered UV flashlight.
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
YuccaFuckingMountain Project and the two big spook companies behind it; working hand-in-hand, synergistically to create the most highly secured place on earth where they and their friends can hide nuclear waste or anything else they want to hide.
What about these:
There's a number of other stories and articles about how earthquakes affect Yucca Mountain.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Except in winter, when it's 24/7 dark. A lot of plants don't handle several months of darkness and die.
Actually it doesn't get totally dark, at least in Alaska. Years ago I spent three weeks there for training while I was in the army. We flew up there the day after Thanksgiving, and most of the tyme the lighting level was more of dusk that really dark. As I was a photographer I was given several rolls of film to take with me, well given four rolls of 24 exposures and brought 7 rolls of 36 exposure of my own. And not one exposure was underdeveloped or streaky, blurry, which happens when a long exposure is taken because low lighting levels requires slow shutter speeds and there's movement.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Reduce, reuse, and recycle is the key to solving our polution issue. Educate please. Don't prohibit a free ecconomy! And finally, stop your finger-pointing at the "right wing" as though only they are responsible for our mess.
Please educate yourself about free market economics first. Externalities such as pollution are a huge problem which are not addressed in free market economies. Unless someone owns a resource and actually has an incentive to preserve its value, the resource will be abused. No one owns our air or water, no one has incentive to keep them clean. You may think the government should have this responsibility, but the government is already a variable not factored into free markets economics, so your argument to keep the economy free is self-defeating.
In this case, the government actually should be involved. It should be taxing manufacturing and/or mining industries the true long-term cost of disposing or recycling their goods (ie. the entire product's lifecycle). Thus, businesses will take these additional costs into consideration when pricing their goods. Consumer prices increase, but disposal taxes decrease. Businesses which are more environmentally friendly would have lower operating costs which is reflected in their prices; so the economics rewards not only efficient businesses, but also environmentally friendly ones.
That's a true, workable free market solution.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
Guess I can't go sleep on the sidewalk or press my face against the glass storefronts, not in the daytime at least. Is this going to like vaporize organic tissue?