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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
Keyword here is catalytic reaction. A catalyst is a substance that initiates a chemical reaction but is not consumed itself in the reaction. The catalyst in the paint would stay in existence, it would simply break down pollutants when they came in contact with the material when UV radiation was hitting it. As long as the pollutants were reduced to innocuous materials there wouldn't be an issue with toxic waste disposal.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
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
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...
Now, that high power solid-state switches ( hence, power converters ) are becoming do-able, is there any way we can start putting high-voltage DC on our power grids?
DC is horribly inefficient at delivering power. Besides, high voltage is high voltage. Power lines run just under the voltage needed to ionize the air. Once you ionize the air, then you set up currents, and those currents are sucking power, power that isn't being delivered, and could have been charged for.
Seems to make more sense to cut off the sources of the polution than to remove them from the environment.
Ok, then: you go convince everyone to stop driving cars and stuff, and get back to us when you've got some progress to report. In the meantime, we'll go ahead and implement self-cleaning buildings.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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?
How is it a free economy when corporations are given power by the state to pollute the property of third persons with limited liability? When a corporations puts pollutants into the air and they enter my property and they hurt me when I breath them, I have no avenue of fair recourse because the government forces me through violence, and the threat of, to accept the damage without proper or any compensation.
How is it a free economy when people are forced by the state to accept corporate pollution of their properties? State interference is not part of a free market. If it was a free market, I would be able to find recompense from all of these polluters for their harm of my person and destruction of my properties.
I agree with you that "right wing" does not apply to this situation very well.