Big dreams rest on tiny particles (10/8/2007)

A £40,000 grant has been won by a University of Portsmouth team to help find ways to stop rising damp from ruining building projects.

If successful, the nanotechnology being developed and tested will also save millions of man-hours and help protect the environment.

Professor Mel Richardson MBE and colleague Dr Zhongyi Zhang of the Department of Mechanical and Design Engineering won the 'pocket grant' with private company Safeguard Europe.

The university has been given £23,000 towards paying a researcher and supporting technology over a period of 18-24 months. The remaining £17,000 is being used by Safeguard Europe to help develop the technology into a product.

The team are hoping to find a way of stopping salt contamination of walls after damp-proofing work has been carried out.

The pocket grant comes from the South East England Development Agency and is aimed at helping fund bright ideas.

The grant has to be paid back if the resulting technology is a commercial success, but no funds have to be paid back if the idea fails to win customers.

Professor Richardson is a world expert in composites and nanotechnology.

His expertise has lead in the past to combining recycled rubbish with nano-clay to make building materials to withstand fierce weather in the mountains of the Tibetan Plateau in China.

He said: "With this grant we are hoping to discover that nano-clay can be used with other materials to make surfaces salt-resistant.

"This might allow us to create an innovative nano-enhanced salt resistant primer for use on walls affected by rising damp. The implications of this are huge. It could be a winner commercially."

Once salt has leached into a wall most types of plaster cannot be used on the surface and the builder or plasterer has to put on a layer of hard sand cement.

Sand cement is disliked by contractors, house builders and historic property groups for different reasons, according to Safeguard Europe R& D Manager, Eric Rirsch.

He said: "All would prefer to use warmer, faster lightweight plasters but they can't because these are unsuitable for salt-contaminated walls."

By developing a salt-resistant primer the team say there will be considerable savings made in both builders' time and in CO2 emissions. Cement produces five percent of the world's manmade CO2 emissions.

Research and testing start at the university this week.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by the University of Portsmouth

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