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Dutch Town Lays Air-Purifying Concrete

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the i-hate-august-news-cycles dept.

eldavojohn writes "In an effort to combat air pollution, a Dutch town has paved some of its streets with air-purifying concrete. It contains a titanium dioxide-based additive that utilizes sunlight to turn car exhaust into harmless nitrates. It was shown to do this in a lab and now the scientists are interested in just how much this will affect the air quality around the road. They will sample the air quality by a normal road and by this newly paved one."

10 of 295 comments (clear)

  1. Offset? by Recovering+Hater · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Because the purifying concrete offsets the pollution incurred from mining the titanium to create the concrete? Am I wrong in thinking I knew an old lady who swallowed a fly? Someone weigh in on this please. Thanks :P

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    1. Re:Offset? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This one is obviously about enhancing the air in the city. It is not supposed to solve any large scale problems with the climate. Didn't RTFA.

    2. Re:Offset? by hardburn · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It might. If it works well enough, it would mean we could either remove catalytic converters from cars (which would increase engine efficiency), or promote the use of small diesels (which can be more fuel efficient but release a lot more NOx), and end up with a net win for smog pollution.

      In other words, it doesn't directly do anything greenhouse gases, but it does allow us to produce less greenhouse gases by using techniques that produce more nitrates.

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    3. Re:Offset? by MillionthMonkey · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If it works well enough, it would mean we could either remove catalytic converters from cars (which would increase engine efficiency), or promote the use of small diesels (which can be more fuel efficient but release a lot more NOx), and end up with a net win for smog pollution.

      An exhaust-eating road surface is never going to be as efficient as a guy just chasing your car down the street with a big vacuum cleaner hose. I think we're keeping our catalytic converters.

  2. Nitrates? by ArcherB · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Nitrates? Aren't those bad in their own right? I'm thinking along the lines of fertilizer run-off and the affect it has on algae in oceans. Could this solution create worse problems?

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  3. How green? by Smivs · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This sounds like a great idea if it works, but surely producing concrete is a far from 'green' process. I wonder how long the concrete has to be in place to neutralise the polluting effect of manufacturing it in the first place.

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    1. Re:How green? by ArcherB · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This sounds like a great idea if it works, but surely producing concrete is a far from 'green' process. I wonder how long the concrete has to be in place to neutralise the polluting effect of manufacturing it in the first place.

      But we are producing concrete anyway, so we'll still be ahead as long as this process does not produce more pollution than the pollution from standard concrete + whatever it absorbs.

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  4. Re:TFA interesting but light on details by Rob+T+Firefly · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm also a bit curious about the "harmless nitrates" that will be washed into the ground every time it rains.

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  5. Two problems by snarfies · · Score: 3, Insightful

    1) From TFA: "'With one rain shower everything is washed clean,' the institution said in a statement." Ah, but exactly WHAT is washed to WHERE, eh? Are we just trading off air pollution for water pollution?

    2) How durable is this new substance? How much pollution can the road suck up before it wears out? Will it need to be resurfaced and/or replaced every year? Two years?

  6. For the system to be effective... by SamP2 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Nitrates don't need to be harmless, nor there needs to be zero side effects. All that's needed is that the combined damage produced by any side effects must be less than the damage produced by the excess carbon dioxide in lieu of said concrete.

    Funny how any time there is a proposed innovation to solve a problem, there are always nitpickers who point out side effects without considering their proportion compared to the original problem being solved. A solution either offers a net benefit, or it doesn't.