The groundbreaking MOXY mission is a response to the urgent need to safeguard cultural heritage CH from the climate crisis, unsustainable living, and social unrest. Numerous CH materials cannot tolerate mechanical “wet” or “dry” cleaning methods and professionals in all areas of specialization increasingly encounter surfaces where soiling cannot be removed at all. MOXY spearheads the green transformation in CH conservation and empowers practitioners with a groundbreaking atomic oxygen (AO) technology to remove carbon-based contaminants in a contact-free and liquid-free action. Groundbreaking non-contact AO cleaning technology offers a new opportunity cleaning a broad range of CH materials, such as paper, textiles, painted surfaces, plaster, metals, plastics, from carbon-based contaminants.
The overall objectives can be summarized as following:
O1 Green AO technology elicitation study, based on interviews with the end-users
O2 Research and development of an atmospheric AO device prototype – proof of concept
O3 Investigating AO generation pathway and transport to the substrate
O4 Investigating AO interactions with carbon-based contaminants and art materials
O5 Testing and characterizing the AO effluent for conservation applications
O6 Developing an affordable high accuracy AO sensor technology to quantify AO flux parameters
O7 Technology road-mapping and investigating the environmental impact via LCA.
O8 Demonstration, Dissemination, and Public Outreach
Scientific and technological innovation by MOXY project contribute to the development an innovative and green non-contact cleaning methods, offering a groundbreaking technology, which does not raise health or environmental concerns, and can be upscaled. To ensure that AO technology is indeed green and sustainable, the MOXY project approach is based on full Life Cycle thinking to the conservation of CH and Safe & Sustainable by Design (SSBD) framework.
