Smog eating cement how cool is this.

[buzzard]

http://www.managinggreen.com/Newsletters_2006/MG0606/JuneArticle8.html

An Italian company is releasing a revolutionary 'smog-eating' cement product capable of reducing urban pollution by over 40 percent.

After 10 years of research, development and testing, the firm, Italcementi, is putting TX Active on the market. It can be applied to road surfaces or building exteriors.

[Knurled99]

1. Awesome!!

Can't wait for this to come to LA.

[porphyrian]

2. That is very cool. - n/t

[jilln]

3. Sounds really cool.

But cement plants are one of the biggest polluters, are they not? So making this product is causing a lot of pollution in itself?

[Rosemary2205]

4. Is this real?

If it is then wow, how great. But I'm skeptical.

[Gwerlain]

8. Looks pretty good to me, from a scientific standpoint.

Of course it has drawbacks- first, it turns some pollutants into carbon dioxide (not much help in containing global warming, IOW). Second, it releases a couple of compounds that, while safe in small quantities, might turn out to be problematic if there's too much of them around. But overall, those compounds look a lot less threatening than the ones that are being converted, so if it's not perfect, it's at least better.

[eppur_se_muova]

14. Saw a report on this a couple of years ago, in Chemical & Engineering News, IIRC

So, yes, I'd say it's very real. Their original goal was to create a building exterior that would never stain or darken due to soot, so it was reported as a "self-cleaning" cement. It would stand to reason that it would also "clean up" unburned fuel, CO, etc. based on the mechanism. It uses TiO2, titanium dioxide, as the photocatalyst. TiO2 has been used for many decades as a paint pigment ('Titanium white") and is relatively cheap and abundant.

The OP has a brutal typo -- SODIUM for SULFUR:

Nitrogen dioxide and sodium dioxide, for example, are turned into calcium nitrate and sodium nitrate

[soothsayer]

5. Sounds better than cement eating fog!

[gfnrob]

7. heeeeee

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[eppur_se_muova]

15. Fog eats marble and limestone. You should see the decorative rails on bridges in Pittsburgh.

That's what all that SOx in the air does for you.

[Orrex]

6. Smog is eating cement now? We're doomed!

Oh, wait a minute...

[democrat_patriot]

9. LOL!! OMG!! Smog is screwn!!!

Poor poor smog. What did smog ever do? huh?

[ieoeja]

10. Remember when ...

... it seemed like new technology was always originating in the United States?

For those who believe in balancing evironmental concerns with economic ones, I have long made this argument. Drag our feet all you want, you know perfectly well that environmental initiatives will eventually win the day. If you want to delay that day as long as possible to save our businesses as money as possible, all you do is help other countries get a jump on us in these technologies.

I'd rather see the United States leading, than following.

[jaxhud]

11. I'm not claiming to be an expert in gas dynamics, but that 40% figure sounds fairly ridiculous. n/t

[jmowreader]

12. Italcementi has a branch in the US

The US division of Italcementi is Essroc, who is making this product now. Look for "TX Aria" cement at a brickyard near you.

This is KINDA interesting: it is a self-cleaning white Portland cement. Now...Portland is usually gray, and white is available at an upcharge. This comes as a white cement? The only problem I see here is one of inconvenience: most guys use white portland so they can color the mix, but if you added cement color to this you'd destroy the photoreactivity of the matrix and negate the reason you buy this cement in the first place.

[nicknameless]

13. Great innovation!

:)