With a surge in the field of architectural technology, today designing can add beauty along with prolong a building’s walls and roof lives. Today people seem to be getting very particular while choosing the ‘skin’ or painting for that outside surface.
But, while choosing out the best life-giving paint material, how many of us try to find out the material’s environmental hazards? – yes, the environment we live in. Unfortunately, we apparently choose the best for us, which eventually may lead to environmental degradation.
Yes, since most of the paints are made from chemicals, they either breaks down slowly over time or becomes part of the rubble if and when the building is demolished! And, we leave the environment polluted unknowingly.
Never mind, if you have not yet decided on the right paint for your home — a British firm, Millennium Inorganic Chemicals, has come up with an ‘eco-paint’ which can contributes positively towards the urban ecology by cutting down on airborne pollution! The paint is able to reduce nitrogen oxides levels contributing to smog and respiratory problems.
While utilizing the same photo-catalytic process of the smog-busting cement as developed and tested in Italy, the new paint can be applied to far more surface areas.
This is how the paint works in contributing positively towards the environment:
The paint’s base is polysiloxane, a polymer made from silicon. The active ingredients are spherical nanoparticles, with diameters of only 30 nanometers, made of calcium carbonate and titanium dioxide (TiO2). The porosity of its polysiloxane base is sufficient to allow nitrous oxides to diffuse though it, and then adhere to the nanoparticles. When sunlight strikes the painted surface, the nanoparticles absorb the ultraviolet radiation and use that energy to convert the nitrous oxides into nitric acid, which is either washed away by rain, or neutralized by the calcium carbonate (which is alkaline), and thus converted into carbon dioxide, calcium nitrate, and water. Another advantage to the use of nanotechnology, is that the particles are so tiny that the paint is initially colorless and clear, and thus receptive to coloring pigments.
Ah! The most interesting part is that, the more the paint neutralizes the smog, the more it is transformed to raise its longevity. So, here is a way you can draw dual benefit form the new ‘eco-paint’ – strengthen your house’s new paint’s life while purifying your surrounding environment.
