2023-06-30 14:13:01
In South Korea, engineers have developed a photocatalytic building material that aims to clean the air inside road tunnels. According to its creators, this new type of concrete is indeed capable of ensuring the decomposition of pollutants.
“Purifying” concrete
Tunnels are a practical, efficient and sustainable way to make vehicle traffic more fluid in cities. However, they poison motorists due to a high concentration of pollution in the air. In 2016, the Center for Tunnel Studies (CETU) in France published to this effect a report which discussed at length the treatment of air in road tunnels. However, you should know that this air contains, among other things, nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides and soot carbon.
However, engineers from the Korea Institute of Civil Engineering and Construction Technology (KICT) may have the solution to this problem, which has been troubling authorities for some time. Published in the journal KoreaScience in 2022, the innovation of researchers is nothing but a photocatalytic concrete. This is a new construction material capable of destroying the pollutants emitted by vehicles through the process of photocatalysis.
According to the project managers, the concrete generates reactive oxygen species (ROS) with the help of light rays, which have significant oxidizing power. Thus, these ROS transform the precursors of fine particles, such as NOx and other SOx, into substances that no longer present any danger.
Credits: Lukassek / iStock
Encouraging results
The researchers have already tested this concrete on the interior walls of the Banpo tunnel in Seoul, the South Korean capital. The light rays necessary for the photocatalytic reaction came from lighting devices installed for the occasion. This is also logical insofar as in tunnels of a certain length, natural light does not penetrate. According to the results, the concentration of nitrogen oxide was reduced by approximately 18% over a 24 hour period. In addition, the engineers noticed the formation of salt resulting from the chemical reaction, but also that the products of photocatalytic degradation are easily evacuated thanks to precipitation.
If photocatalysts are already known for their ability to eliminate fine particles in the air, they are still rare in the construction sector. The main reason for this lack of interest is financial. Nevertheless, the researchers behind the study seem to have managed to achieve some profitability through their own large-scale production process. In addition, the concrete in question does not require no expensive maintenance after installation. However, they are still continuing their work to improve the performance of this material and hope to lead to commercialization. A new test in real conditions is currently being carried out for this purpose in the province of Gyeonggi-do, east of Seoul.
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