EVALUATION OF LONG TERM ENVIRONMENTAL AND FUNCTIONAL PERFORMANCES OF INNOVATIVE PHOTOCATALYTIC ROAD PAVEMENTS

摘要

Air pollution represents a serious and inevitable challenge. In recent years lots of researchers spent timeand resources to find solutions and, consequently, some important advances have been made, leading tostronger environmental policies, hinging not only on regulation of specific sources and fuel quality, butalso on the reduction of pollutants concentration near the source. Particular attention was to devoted todevelopment of innovative photocatalytic road pavements. This paper concerns road pavements able toreduce the gas exhausted from vehicles, thanks to the action of photocatalysts, mainly titanium dioxide,incorporated into the pavement mixture.The experimentation carried out allowed to evaluate the depolluting action due to a photocatalytic mortaras well as mechanical characteristics of the pavement. Results allowed also to find the optimal water andtitainium dioxide content for the photocatalytic mortar.Furthermore a new developed bituminous photocatalytic pavement was analyzed, focusing on long termenvironmental pavement effectiveness, measured with a new procedure able to simulate vehicleswearing effect on surface pavements, obtaining excellent air pollutants concentration reduction anddemonstrating the significantly enhancement of air quality given by photocatalytic road materials.Air pollution improvement was accurately quantified with a newly equipment that enabled the evaluationof Nitrogen Oxides reduction and allowed to investigate the factors affecting photocatalyticperformances.