In the News

The construction industry has recently begun to look at a variety of manufactured nanomaterials as a way to advance conventional construction materials, according to this article. Nanomaterials could help the construction industry enhance material properties as well as reduce energy consumption. Commercial buildings and residential houses use 41 percent of all the energy consumed in the United States. Scientists at Rice University, United States, have completed a review that looks at the benefits of using nanomaterials in construction materials and highlights the potentially harmful aspects of releasing nanomaterials into the environment. The review contains a list of current uses of nanomaterials in various building applications and highlights potential and promising future uses. The authors state that "[W]hether nanoenabled construction materials could be designed to be "safe" and still display the properties that make them useful is an outstanding question," and suggest that adopting principles of industrial ecology and pollution prevention should be a high priority to prevent environmental pollution and the associated impacts. Substances should be re-engineered to create safer, greener, and yet effective products, the authors say. They conclude by emphasizing the potential of manufactured nanomaterials in the construction industry to harvest solar or other forms of renewable energy, and as substitutes for materials such as lead and mercury that can become harmful environmental pollutants. The article and a link to the review can be found online at the link below.

The original article may still be available at www.nanowerk.com/spotlight/spotid=17138.php