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A skyscraper that devours the smog around it? Now that’s a smart idea.
Alcoa have now launched Reynobond® with EcoClean™, the first coil-coated architectural panel that helps clean itself and the air around it. This apparently game-changing product was created by merging breakthrough innovations in science and design from Alcoa and Japanese manufacturer TOTO®.
Called “Reynobond with EcoClean,” the product is a partnership between the aluminum giant and design-forward Japanese manufacturer Toto.
Alcoa says the panels reduce maintenance costs and helps decompose smog and other pollutants in the air that cling to building surfaces, from dirt to diesel fumes.
So. . .How effective is the technology? Alcoa says about 10,000 square feet of the panels can clean the air as well as 80 medium-sized deciduous trees. It’s enough to offset four cars each day.
It’s simple to consider applications of this green building technology: Times Square or London would glimmer a little brighter. Ultra-high skyscrapers wouldn’t need to hire daring window cleaners to keep floor-to-ceiling windows transparent. And, at scale, a smog-choked cities could breathe a bit easier.
At the core of the concept is a proprietary process that takes Toto’s patented Hydrotect technology — which helps keep microbes at bay on the company’s toilets, bath tubs and other bathroom fixtures — and applies it to a hydrophilic titanium dioxide coating on the pre-painted aluminum surface of a Reynobond panel.
The result: an aluminum panel that, in the presence of sunlight, acts as a catalyst to break down organic pollutants on its surface and in the air around it. Once broken down, rainwater simply rinses them away.
Alcoa formally debuted the panel at the AIA 2011 National Convention and Design Exposition on May 12 in New Orleans.
