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Picada

Paint is a protective coating. Picada’s Ecopaint extends the definition of protection to include the neutralization of pollution in the air that swirls over the paint’s surface.

Ecopaint eats pollution

We all know how paint works. Exterior paint’s job is to protect the substrate beneath it. You apply it, it deteriorates, you reapply it. The Picada Project’s Ecopaint has two jobs: it also neutralizes the pollutants that would aid its deterioration. And, in doing so, eliminates Nitrogen Oxides to improve air quality.

Ecopaint is a silicon-based polymer that is porous enough to allow Nitrogen Oxides (NOx) to pass through and stick to titanium oxide particles below. When the particles absorb ultraviolet light they are neutralized, producing tiny quantities of CO2, water and calcium nitrate as by-products.

NOx are serious human-health hazards, credited as a major cause of respiratory problems and smog production. Dr Robert McIntyre, of Millennium Chemicals in the UK, one of the eight organizations involved in the Picada project, has said that a typical 0.3 mm layer of Ecopaint would be enough to last five years in a heavily polluted city.

Ecopaint is due to be released commercially in 2009, and has been developed under a EU-funded program – the Photcatalytic Innovative Coverings Applications for Depollution Assessment program (PICADA). The research consortium includes members from Austria, Denmark, England, France, Greece, and Italy. In a 2002 trial, 7,000 square meters of road surface was covered with catalytic cement in Milan, Italy. Residents reported that it was noticeably easier to breathe and concentrations of nitrogen oxides at street level were cut by up to sixty percent. Ecopaint is a response to the EU Member States directive that NOx levels should be have fallen to below an annual average of 21 parts per billion by 2010.

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