ZnO nanostructures based innovative photocatalytic road for air purification
Résumé
Atmospheric pollution is a major issue affecting environment and health. Therefore, semi-conductor-nanoparticles-based photocatalytic infrastructures appeared as a promising solution to improve urban air quality due to their abilities to mineralize toxic organic compounds. To avoid the direct use of free nanoparticles, as nanomaterials are suspected to be carcinogenic, this work intends to develop civil engineering materials functionalized by direct growth of ZnO nanostructures as a more environmentally friendly and biocompatible approach to reduce the air pollution. By scaling-up an innovative and low-cost hydrothermal direct growth synthesis, a few square meters paved with tiling and bitumen road were easily produced in order to evaluate their photocatalytic activity at large scale under solar lamp in a climatic chamber (Sense-City, 3200 m3) to reflect real atmospheric air purification situations. Observations provide insights into their ability to simultaneously remove various pollutants from a real car exhaust (O3, COX, NOX, VOCs) and their durability, as well as understandings of the weather conditions impact on the photocatalytic degradation of these pollutants and of the relationships between pollutants trend evolution. This study also seems to prove that, when exposed to sunlight, bitumen roads are responsible of pollutants emission and causes modifications in the Chapman cycle.
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