Germany. Researchers will execute a project that will test the operation of special paints applied on highways or other urban surfaces that generate pollution, in order to minimize nitrogen oxide (NOx) in the surrounding air.
NOx makes precence in the air, produced mostly by vehicle engines and the combustion generated by some power plants, so they seek to reduce it with this project with photocatalytic active coatings.
Michael Hüben, from the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology in Schmallenberg, and Frank Neumann, from the Fraunhofer Institute for Surface and Thin Film Engineering in Braunschweig, make up the team.
"There are already a number of products available for photocatalytic coating of surfaces, but the standard measurement method, according to ISO 22197-1, cannot be applied to all problems. At the Institute of Molecular Biology we have developed a special measuring cell that we are using in our project."
The coatings to be tested contain catalysts based on titanium oxide, a material that is affordable and available in large quantities. What coatings do is, broadly speaking, remove nitrogen oxides, leaving nitrates in their place.
