Durability of Cementitious Photocatalytic Building Materials

Photocatalytic building materials have been shown to be a promising remediation technique for air pollutants such as NOx and VOC's. However, there are still doubts and questions about the durability of the air cleaning characteristic in time. In this respect, a pre-normative research is being undertaken at BRRC as a first step towards evaluation of the life time of these photo-active air purifying products. This is done by combining and adapting existing durability tests for cement-based materials with standardized test methods to determine the photocatalytic activity. First results of this research are presented here, including a state-of-the-art on accelerated ageing testing as well as the validation of applicable ageing procedures in combination with a normalized evaluation test for photocatalytic NOx abatement. Finally, recommendations for future work regarding durability testing on photocatalytic building materials are also given. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.