Best wishes for a Happy and Peaceful New Year
A message from the Board of Directors
Dear Members, Friends and Colleagues,
The European Association of Material Surfaces Science and Technology (EMASST) founded in 2014 as a non-profit organization in Rome, Italy.
Scope of EMASST is to act as an interdisciplinary forum for scientists, specialized companies and governmental authorities. Emphasis is given on research and technological development in the field of Material Surfaces, particularly, on Smart Coatings, Surface Modification and Nanotechnology, Advanced Manufacturing/Processing and Characterization of Nanomaterials as applied in:
Due to the complex nature of these issues the specialization of the members and other interested persons supporting and promoting the aims of EMASST is multivariate: Chemical and physical processes of nanomaterials, environmental aspects, development of smart materials etc.
The origin of the members of EMASST is mostly European but EMASST welcomes and promotes memberships of interested scientists from non-European countries as well.
EMASST seeks through its scientific-technical conferences to promote the seeding of new interdisciplinary research groups in centers of excellence; to catalyze the creation of new groups and research efforts; and to facilitate the rapid spread of new knowledge.
The new Board of Directors:
Dr. Dimitrios Kotzias-President
Dr. Rosanna Mabilia-Vice president and responsible for financial issues
Dr. Paolo Ciccioli-Responsible for scientific affairs
Dr. Luca Mazzola, President of Merit
Contribution to the EMASST Newsletter
Thomas Maggos, Atmospheric Chemistry and Innovative Technologies Laboratory/INRASTES/NCSR Demokritos, Ag. Parakevi, Athens, Greece
VISIBLE LIGHT RESPONSIVE PHOTOCATALYTIC PAINTS FOR INDOOR AIR QUALITY IMPROVEMENT. The LIFEVISIONS project
Th. Maggos1, P. Panagopoulos1, K. Theodorou2, A. Nikolakopoulos2, G. Kiriakidis3, E. Skliri3, E. Gagaoudakis3, V. Binas3.
1Atmospheric Chemistry and Innovative Technologies Laboratory/INRASTES/NCSR Demokritos, Ag. Parakevi, Athens, Greece
2 VITEX S.A, Aspropyrgos, Greece
3Institute of Electronic Structure & Lasers/FORTH, Heraclion Greece
Concentration of air pollutants within indoor environments are often 2-5 times those found outdoors. LIFEVISIONSproject takes advantage of the best available practices to design, implement and demonstrate an innovative and cost-efficient methodology for the mitigation of air pollutants and energy consumption in the building sector. More specifically, the LIFEVISIONS project aims at upscaling an innovative photocatalytic paint, improving the quality of the indoor environment while it will enable significant energy savings in buildings.
For that purpose, optimization and upscaling of a novel photocatalytic powder were conducted. The optimization process concerned 3 main parameters: 1) Optimization of Synthetic Pathways (sol gel, modified, hydrothermal, alkali and ammonia-based synthesis) 2) Optimization of Dopants Concentration (Metal doped TiO2 powders with 0.04% dopant concentration) 3) Optimization and control of the particle size using a ball milling system (nanosized particles). The best promising powder, in terms of its efficiency to degrade air pollutants, was used for semi-industrial production of a photocatalytic paint (VISIONS Photo-Paints).
Formulations with organic and inorganic binders have been designed with the intention of high surface porosity to increase photo-paints action and the appropriate all-around performance (appearance, gloss, easy of application, water scrub resistance etc). The concentration of the VISIONS powder in these matrices was set to 20%.
The efficiency of the above described optimized VISIONS powder and paint to photocatalytically degrade air pollutants such as nitrogen oxide (NO) & toluene under visible light was performed using a continuous tank reactor with the gas mixture flow in contact with the test material. The methodological approach was based on EN 16980-1:2021. It was shown that 84,4% of NO and 29.5% of toluene were photocatallytically removed due to VISIONS powder effect.
Beyond the laboratory tests, real scale applications of VISIONS Photo-paint were conducted in a set of existing Demo-Houses prototype demonstrator. The VISIONS paint was applied in one of the Demo Houses, the so call ''Green House''. The other one was considered as reference: the "Conventional House". Both green and conventional rooms were fed with equal amount of pollutants and were illuminated using the same lamp system.
Currently the VISIONS photo paint is applied in the Hellenic Naval Academy buildings as a real scale pilot study. The main output of the real scale applications will be the proof of the efficiency of VISIONS paint to improve real world indoor environments while in parallel will reduce energy consumptions. The above described efficiency will be quantified in terms of air pollutants and energy efficiency reductions.
The comparative advantage of VISIONS outcome is not only the innovative product (VISIONS photo-paint) but also the full set of IT tools that accompanies it. To that end, it is under development a Decision Support System (DSS), which will serve as a multi-criteria support tool towards studying the efficiency of the proposed solutions, processes and methods in future applications.
Acknowledgement
This work was supported by LIFE VISIONS project (LIFE19 ENV/GR/000100) with the contribution of the LIFE Programme of the European Union. This work reflects only the authors' view and CINEA is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.
