Air pollution inside buildings may have several origins, such as: chemical substances in paints, varnishes, carpets, furniture, and cleaning agents; smoke from heaters, chimneys, and tobacco; dust particles; microorganisms; perfumes and cosmetics; etc. All these substances are more susceptible to stay longer undiluted indoors than outdoors, and this results in more polluted indoor environments than their outdoor equivalents, usually by a factor of between two and five.

The AMBICOAT project aims to develop surface coatings which, when applied on ceramic tiles, have the capability of naturally decomposing and neutralizing the formaldehydes present in air. Formaldehydes are volatile compounds that typically stay in gas form in buildings’ interiors. They have been found to be detrimental to human health when such gas concentrations reach certain levels.

During the current stage of the project, KERABEN GRUPO, in cooperation with the Instituto de Tecnología Cerámica (ITC-AICE), will engage in validation activities that will test the proposed solutions in real use situations. The breakthroughs of the project are based on porous organometallic compounds (or MOFs) applied in the photodegradation of formaldehydes and their integration as coatings in several building materials. In order to measure the effectiveness of such photocatalytic coatings, their performance in an environment with multiple interactions among materials will be studied. Likewise, the effects of variations in the environmental conditions (temperature, humidity, etc.) in the MOFs’ performance will be recorded.

The project is co-funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, within the call “Retos Colaboración 2017”, file number RTC-2017-6428-5, in the frame of Challenge 5: “Action on climate change and efficiency in the use of resources and raw materials". KERABEN GRUPO is involved in the project through an ad-hoc six-member consortium that also includes the Universitat de València (ICMOL, MatCo), the Technology Centres AIMPLAS and ITC, OMAR COATINGS, and PECTRO.