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Science Technology

Self-Cleaning Buildings to Fight Smog 262

Posted by Zonk from the for-a-better-tomorrow dept.
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."
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Self-Cleaning Buildings to Fight Smog More

Self-Cleaning Buildings to Fight Smog

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  • Solar? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 2bitcomputers ( 864663 ) on Sunday July 24, 2005 @03:37AM (#13148410) Homepage
    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.

    • Re:Solar? (Score:2, Informative)

      by myukew ( 823565 )
      That's much too expensive. Compare the costs of TiO2 and a solar panel and you'll see for yourself.
      But of course it would be much better for the environment.

    • Tarffic is the primary cause of pollution (Score:5, Insightful)

      by October_30th ( 531777 ) on Sunday July 24, 2005 @03:52AM (#13148446) Homepage Journal
      Your car puts out NOTHING compared to a 250Mw coal plant.

      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.

      • Not to mention that the coal plant can be hundreds of miles away, especially if you run a superconducting powerline to the city.
      • Which in no way negates the idea of buildings providing their own power.
      • Even so, his idea is still valid. Why treat the symptoms instead of the cause? Rather then leaving smog alone and making buildings look pretty, let's cut down on the smog itself. This discovery is just a way to hide the garbage under the carpet.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re:Solar? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by jacksonj04 ( 800021 ) <nick@nickjackson.me> on Sunday July 24, 2005 @05:34AM (#13148667) Homepage
        OMGS you suggested nuclear die die planet killing scum!
        [/sarcasm]

        Seriously though, whilst I'm all in favour of nuclear it lacks a lot of public support.

        A better idea would be to plant rooftop gardens, and hang cylindrical turbines off the sides of buildings. Cities act like big wind tunnels between tall buildings, cylindrical turbines could be used to turn this air into power for the building whilst the garden on the top helps buffer some of the pollution and generally make a nicer place.

        Alternatively, make the centre of large cities pedestrian only.

        • Re:Solar? (Score:3, Insightful)

          by mysticgoat ( 582871 )

          Nuclear power lacks public support because of an accounting problem.

          The nuclear industry is the first we've developed where the greatest costs occur in the post-production period (with waste and byproduct management). The Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) that guide economic modelling (and accounting in general) don't address this kind of post production cost very well. Waste management and recycling efforts have usually been regarded as refinements of the basic spreadsheet models, not as c

      • The cost of a new nuke plant is unreal. Damn the insurance companies!
    • Except for the fact that solar wouldn't power half the building all the time, and the power plants would have to run anyway because you can't just flip them on and off like a lightswitch when the sun sets.

      This isn't Sim City where so long as your power output is greater than your usage the buildings stay powered.

      • Re:Solar? (Score:2, Informative)

        by wooley-one ( 634162 )
        You're wrong. Many utilities maintain so called "Peak Load" plants (often diesel generators). These plants are switched on to accommodate heavy load, then turned off once they are no longer required (diesel is expensive).

    • Re:Solar? (Score:3, Informative)

      by OzRoy ( 602691 )
      True, solar panels do not create polutants when being used. But the manufacture of them does create huge amount of polution due to the mining and refining processes of the materials used.

      They are not a magical answer to all our polution, and energy needs.

    • But just wait until these buildings decide that it's the HUMANS inside of them that are the main source of the dirt/mess on and inside.

      Then the buildings band together to start the extermination of the human race!

      STAY AWAY FROM THE BUILDINGS.

    • Your car puts out NOTHING compared to a 250Mw coal plant.

      Proportionally that little and old 250MW unit won't put out a lot - NOx and SOx are removed with water and ash is trapped with electrostatic precipitatators or bag filters - it's been done for decades. You can't put a lot in the way of pollution controls on a car without adding a lot of weight - power plants don't have that problem. Power plants don't tend to be in the middle of cities anymore, and it's inthe middle of cities with slow moving traf

    • Yes, but the 250M cars put out an amazing amount compared to that coal plant...

    • Re:Solar? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Doc Ruby ( 173196 )
      The average 2004 passenger vehicle sold in the US produces 227HP, 169.274KW [thecarconnection.com]. So 1477 cars, or a quarter-mile of every rushhour freeway, produces as much power as a 250MW coal plant. Find the relative "smog efficiency", and you've got the miles of freeway - probably not more than a mile or two - that is actually worse pollution than a plant. Most cities have dozens or hundreds of miles of traffic, compared to 2000 250MW coal plants (5E12W total US coal-> electricity / 250MW).

      Coal plants might still put o
      • Your point is basically correct, except that you are calculating based on maximum horsepower output.

        A typical car only needs 5 to 30 HP to maintain highway speeds, so you are off by at least an order of magnitude.
        • 250MW coal plants don't produce 2.1921Tj each year, either. There are a lot of efficiency/scaling factors missing from my analysis. Even a few orders of magnitude smaller is totally different from "nothing compared to", which was the assertion of the post to which I replied. Point being that these complex, but analyzable, energy efficiencies for cars, coal plants, and buildings are not negligible. They demand attention, especially if we're going to make things worse by "greenwashing" dirty power generation
        • Basing HP needs on cruising speeds is not going to give you a valid estimate. In most large cities (where we'd be first using this tech anyways) the majority of traffic is stop and go, often times emphasis on the stop. I've timed it out before... often times when commuting a vehicle spends more time idling than it does driving.

    • Re:Solar? (Score:4, Informative)

      by falconwolf ( 725481 ) <falconsoaring_2000@yah o o .com> on Sunday July 24, 2005 @06:29PM (#13152362)

      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.

      Actually from what I read, I think one place might of been in HomePower mag [homepower.com] and/or Solar Today mag [solartoday.org] , was that vehicles are the single biggest contributers to manmade greenhouse gases. A simple remedy for this though is Biodiesel [biodiesel.org] . Without modification diesel engines can run on biodiesel. Actually Rudolph Diesel the designer of the diesel engine designed it to run on most any vegetable oil. And because the plants used to make the oil soak up carbon dioxide they are carbon neutral. It's not so much how much one vehicle puts out as it is the total of all vehicles.

      However more building should include solar power in their design, active and passive. One way as you've stated is pv panels. Another way is a thin film that's being developed that can be applied to windows and the sides of building to generate solar power. Another method of power generation are wind genies, wind generators.

      Falcon

  • titanium dioxide? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by John Seminal ( 698722 ) on Sunday July 24, 2005 @03:39AM (#13148416) Journal
    this sounds like a right wing conservative BS smog & smoke screen. what is next, the republican plan to protect forrests- you can cut down 300 year old trees as long as you stick a seed back in the ground?

    the way to fight polution is at the source. stop corporations from producing polution. if that is done, then the people won't have to spend tax dollars cleaning up the mess.

    • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday July 24, 2005 @04:08AM (#13148499)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re:titanium dioxide? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by a whoabot ( 706122 ) on Sunday July 24, 2005 @04:28AM (#13148546)
        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.
      • Don't prohibit a free ecconomy

        Oh yes, a free economy. Because that works out so very well doesn't it? In a free economy, corporations do whatever it takes in the short term to improve the bottom line, even at the expense of the long term. Just ask HP how cutting all their research a couple of years back is working out for those 10,000 people they freshly laid off. Better yet, for a succinct reasoning of why true free markets would be a disaster for everyone, check out the definition of the "tragedy of
      • I advocate that the government step in and make the government pay the full cost of doing business. If corporations can't get away with pushing the cost of their polluting off onto the public (or their children) that would really be a 'free economy'.
    • what is next, the republican plan to protect forrests- you can cut down 300 year old trees as long as you stick a seed back in the ground?

      If you're interested in the environmental effect overall, that's actually a very good thing to do. Tree's soak up a lot more CO2 as they grow than they do when they're at their full size. From an environmental aspect cutting trees down and planting new ones is considerably better than leaving fully grown trees standing.

      Of course, that sort of ignores the heritage of ol
    • I must of read a different article because I didn't see anyone suggesting that we can use this as a replacement for reducing pollution in the first place.

      It seems to me that this is a solution that can be used in conjunction with such efforts.

      In fact there was even some questions as to how effective this would be

      "Trying to clean up air pollution seems to me to be a stretch," said Reynaldo Barreto, a chemistry professor at Purdue University in Indiana. "It doesn't mean it can't be done. But there's a

  • Sounds great. At least now we can die in good-looking houses. How about reducing the damned pollution?!

    • That's the point (Score:3, Informative)

      by myukew ( 823565 )
      It's not about cleaner houses, it's about cleaner air!
      They try to make a house work like a tree to actively reduce the amount of pollution in the air. That the house stays clean is just a nice side-effect

  • Now, can we put DC on the transmission lines? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by anubi ( 640541 ) on Sunday July 24, 2005 @03:49AM (#13148431) Journal
    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?

    The rationale here being the DC will ionize the air, charging the impurities, thereby encouraging them to head for and adhere to these pollution-destroying buildings.

    Incidentally, ionizing the air is NOT a new concept. Its been happening in nature since Earth began... especially during thunderstorms when the air is so charged it breaks down - we call it lightning.

    I have often wondered if dirgibles, charged from being moored to the business end of a large vandergraff generator ( several stories tall ) would do the trick.

    If a small electrostatic generator drops the crap out of the air in a room, would a bigger one clear stagnant air over an entire city... such as the Los Angeles basin?

    • Re:Now, can we put DC on the transmission lines? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 24, 2005 @04:05AM (#13148490)
      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.
      • I was of the understanding that DC was actually more efficient to transfer, but was very difficult to transform its voltage by conventional means until the advent of modern high-speed high-voltage solid state switches ( SCR, IGBT , and similar ).

        I admit for constant-speed rotating machinery, its damn hard to beat 3-phase AC.

        I have noted several companies are now investigating DC again as new devices are becoming available which will make high-power DC-DC converters economically do-able. Here's an exa

      • DC is far better at transferring power.

        1) You get improved conduictivity due to no skin effect
        2) You dont have eddy losses.

        As the other poster mentioned, it's just harder to convert voltages with DC, but we are getting better at it.
        • You also make better use of the conductor (it can always be operating at high current, rather than oscillating through zero 120 times a second.) And for long distance transmission, DC power lines are immune to voltages induced by geomagnetic storms. These can harm AC systems by adding induced quasi-DC currents, which can damage transformers.
      • DC is much more efficient than AC at extremely high voltages. There is a reason the modern power distribution system in quebec operates on DC for long-haul runs. It also makes them immune to the power reflection problem that knocked out our power in Ontario and some States a couple of summers ago.
    • If power lines were designed to produce lots of ions, they'd produce lots of ozone, which is not good to breathe regularly.

  • Consider the source (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 24, 2005 @03:51AM (#13148438)
    Seems to make more sense to cut off the sources of the polution than to remove them from the environment. Improving engine efficency and adding proper safty equipment to power plants will do far more than coating everything in sight with titanium oxide. The self cleaning properties may be enough of a reason to use the coatings so the polution fighting is simply a side benefit. Why aren't the offenders held accountable for the polution in the first place? If power companies and auto companies were required to clean up their own messes their profits would disappear overnight. Nuclear power is generally referred to as the cheapiest cleaniest source but that's mostly because the US government generally picks up the clean up bill. The nuclear clean up programs are running billions of dollars a year with no end in sight. Oil companies are releasing massive amounts of hydrocarbons a year with no accountability. Alternative sources will start looking cheap when the government stops picking up the bill for cleaning up coal, oil and nuclear messes. Secondary costs of health care, global warming and clean up aren't ever factored into costs of energy. If sea levels rise five feet due to global warming the world will loose trillions of dollars in coastal property. Depreciate that cost into your gallon of gas.

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday July 24, 2005 @04:08AM (#13148498)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • I agree with you, but I also agree with the grandparent poster, who correctly identified what should be the sane course of action. However, as you implied in your post, people are not sane. Just look at some of the magalopolis in south america, mexico, india nad china, you you will understand how non-sane people really are.

        That said, people are not completely immune to good arguments, public campaigns and change of lifestyle, if you offer them a viable alternative. If you have a good, capilar and affordabl
      • Put a tax on carbon based fuel sources. Start at 1%. Then increase it by 1% each year.
        • That would never work!
          Year 1 - 1% tax
          Year 2 - 1.01% tax
          Year 3 - 1.0201% tax ...
          Year 50 - 1.62834% tax ...
          Year 233 - 10.059% tax

          That doesn't look like a viable plan to me...
        • I have never understood why the feds do not do a tax for 10 years, where each year the tax would rise by a set amount. Had we done that back in the 90's (or better in the 80's), we would have nothing but high mileage cars running around.
        • You mean almost like in the UK [bbc.co.uk] and most of the rest of the world.

          The US is almost alone in having fuel prices as low as they are. Adding significant fuel taxes won't change everything, but taxes on those levels for fuel does push people to consider fuel economy to a lot higher degree than what people in the US currently does. It also inevitably lead a lot of people to seriously consider public transport (with the US public transport system being what it is, for that effect to make a difference pushing any

    • Nuclear power is generally referred to as the cheapiest cleaniest source but that's mostly because the US government generally picks up the clean up bill. The nuclear clean up programs are running billions of dollars a year with no end in sight.

      The government is doubly guilty here:

      1. They spend billions on cleanup programs that go nowhere
      2. They fail to allow nuclear reprocessing, which would turn most of the waste into reusable nuclear fuel

      Why do France and Japan have sizable nuclear infrastructures? Beca

      • While (1) seems correct, (2) is misleading. Reprocessing of nuclear fuel would not be happening in the US even if the government didn't put up roadblocks -- uranium is still far too cheap for it to make sense.

        What's happening with spent fuel is probably what should have been done from the beginning. Fuel rods that have cooled for a decade or more are being sealed in air-cooled armored casks. These casks are safe, relatively cheap, and secure. They won't corrode for centuries, and they leave the fuel ac

  • Why not just fight the root of the problem (Score:4, Insightful)

    by smidget2k4 ( 847334 ) on Sunday July 24, 2005 @03:58AM (#13148464)
    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 [wikipedia.org] 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 [wikipedia.org] 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...
  • Can I put this stuff on my car (-:

  • of course (Score:3, Funny)

    by Joe the Lesser ( 533425 ) on Sunday July 24, 2005 @04:03AM (#13148487) Homepage Journal
    A factory that cleans like a cat, acts like a cat, so don't expect it to produce anything for 18 hours a day.

  • Carbon? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by moderators_are_w*nke ( 571920 ) on Sunday July 24, 2005 @04:06AM (#13148493) Journal
    Outside of certain cities, such as Athens and Tehran, motor pollution is not such an issue anymore, as we all have catalytic convertors fitted to our cars (at least we do in the EU). Unfortunately, its still pumping out CO2. What is required is a catalyst which turns CO2 into Carbon and Oxygen. Unfortunately outside of plants and trees we don't have one. I suspect the worlds largest polluter will have to do better than this.
    • Every good perpetuum mobile is covered with a catalyst that turns CO2 int C and O2.
    • What is required is a catalyst which turns CO2 into Carbon and Oxygen. Unfortunately outside of plants and trees we don't have one.

      What is this newfangled "plants and trees" technology of which you speak? If these things do what you claim, why don't we just make more of them?

      (sorry, just being silly) =P
  • Neat idea, but I wonder how long before someone cries out it would render jobless all those fearless people cleaning the skyscrapers from the outside on those tiny scaffolds.

  • Pollution is a big deal (Score:3, Interesting)

    by haggar ( 72771 ) on Sunday July 24, 2005 @04:39AM (#13148575) Homepage Journal
    Pollution causes decreased life span and quality of life. Whether you (or even your parents) lived in a clean environment or a polluted one, can determine whether you'll have all sorts of allergies, cancer, respiratory tract diseases etc. Even if you regularly check for cancer and catch each one in time, try to prolg your lifespan with antioxidants and reduced intake of calories, pollution will still get you: you may attain longer life, but with much reduced mental capacity or even dementia.

    So, if you're a geek and you value your grey matter, you'll take pollution seriously.

    In my view, one of the best ways around pollution is greater use of public transportation (expecially trains and such) - this is a problem in the US, where the existing public transportation companies have been bought and dismantled shortly after WWII - and greater utilization of nuclear, hydro, solar and wind power plants for production of electrical energy.

  • "Organic compounds are broken down into carbon dioxide and water, while the nitrogen oxides yield nitrate salts."
    Better not lean against these babies then I guess...

  • Deaths from air pollution and nuclear power (Score:4, Insightful)

    by FleaPlus ( 6935 ) on Sunday July 24, 2005 @05:24AM (#13148647) Journal
    Interesting factoid of the day:

    About 3 million people die every year from air pollution. That's about an order of magnitude greater than the number of people who have died in the entire history of nuclear power and nuclear weapons, including Chernobyl, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki.

    However, if you ask a random person which causes more deaths, what do you think they'll say?
    • Well you produce 3 million death certificates that say "air pollution" that are dated 2003 and I'll believe you.

      The main problem with BS statistics like yours is that these deaths can be recycled for whatever the cause du jure.

      Suppose someone dies of pneumonia. Due to poor health caused by a brain tumor. And they smoked cigarettes. And used to work as a asbestos remover.

      Died from pollution: Check
      Died from using a cell phone: Check
      Died from asbestos: Check
      Died from cigarettes: Check

      This person died 4
  • It would make more sense to advocate roof gardens, street trees, and vines. These would have similar effects, but function more efficiently. Plants have the added advantage of making environments desirable to humans.

  • Titanium dioxide has other problems (Score:4, Informative)

    by domefreak ( 231769 ) on Sunday July 24, 2005 @09:14AM (#13149287)
    The article explains that the smog-busting coating for buildings will contain titanium dioxide. They note that this compound is already prevalent in paints, but presumably this process requires a higher concentration than that. I searched GreenSpec [greenspec.com] for any existing paints that use this effect, and instead found this interesting fact:
    The production of pigments can be a highly polluting process. When titanium dioxide is extracted from sand, large quantities of by-products are produced that have historically been disposed of by ocean dumping and/or deep-well injection. The process of refining titanium dioxide is also very energy intensive, with significant releases of carbon dioxide and sulfur oxides. The European Community considers these problems associated with titanium dioxide so serious that they have established limits on the amount of white pigment allowed, and limits on allowable emissions from pigment manufacture, for paints under consideration for the European Eco Label.
    (from

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