Earth Day: Revolutionary paint offers solution to air pollution

According to (Mateo, Janvic, 2019). An innovative type of paint developed by a

Philippine company is slowly transforming regular walls into giant air purifiers,
revolutionizing the fight against air pollution in different parts of the world.

Local paint manufacturer and distributor Boysen (Pacific Paint) has developed a
type of paint that can eliminate harmful air pollutants such as nitrogen oxide (NOx)
and other volatile organic compounds.

Mainly generated by vehicle emissions, NOx is a common air pollutant known to

have serious consequences for health and the environment, including causing acid
rain and smog.

Called KNOxOUT, the paint contains ultrafine titanium dioxide that breaks down
NOx and converts it into harmless substances.

“Even before we developed KNOxOUT, there had been several studies proving
that the active ingredient, the nano-sized titanium dioxide, is a photocatalytic
product that can help eliminate pollutants in the air,” Patrick Negrete, assistant
manager at the technical service department at Boysen, told The STAR.

“What our company did was to actually produce the product and market it here in
the Philippines. Eventually, when other countries heard about it, we started
exporting it to them,” he added.

The paint is activated using light energy, enabling the active ingredient to convert
NOx into nitric acid, which is rapidly neutralized to produce harmless quantities of
calcium nitrate, water and negligible amounts of carbon dioxide.

Negrete said the company has invested heavily in the development and testing of
the product, which was launched about a decade ago.

The motivation behind it, he noted, was simple: find a solution to the worsening
problem of air pollution.

During testing, which included painting a metro rail transit station in Makati,
Boysen discovered that one square meter of wall painted by KNOxOUT could
remove up to 160 grams of NOx per year, comparable to the air cleaning impact of
a mature tree.

A recent test conducted at King’s College London confirmed results of the Manila
trial.

In urban areas where tree planting is not viable due to lack of space, the company
said painting walls using their product could be a feasible alternative.

This was the idea behind Project EDSA, an initiative that involved painting lung-
shaped trees and other artworks along the country’s busiest thoroughfare.

“With Project EDSA we’re not only transforming the city’s main artery into a
showcase for art, we’re creating massive, solar powered air purifiers along the
city’s most polluted roadway,” Pacific Paint vice president Johnson Ongking was
quoted as saying in an article published in the Asia Pacific Coatings Journal.

“It’s using the beauty of art and the power of science to help address the ugly
problem of air pollution in our city,” Ongking said.

Similar projects have cropped up in other countries, including Peru, Colombia and
the US.

Boysen said KNOxOUT is ideal in places where air pollution builds up the most,
including in tunnels, bus terminals, car parks, vehicle entranceways to buildings,
walkways and courtyards.

The paint can also be used indoors, as the active ingredient reacts to fluorescent
light as well.

In Mexico City, a hospital installed a hive-like façade that uses KNOxOUT to

purify air entering the building.

A tunnel in The Hague, in the Netherlands, and an indoor car park in Paris, France
have also used the paint.

Despite its positive impact on the environment, however, KNOxOUT has yet to
dominate the market.

Negrete said this might be due to the cost of the product, which is about three times
more expensive than regular paint.
“Not everyone would be willing to pay for it,” he says. “But for some, the cost is
negligible if you think about how it will benefit future generations.”

He said the company will continue to push for the use of KNOxOUT and develop
other products that are geared toward protecting the environment.

“KNOxOUT is here to stay,” he said. “If you think about it, this is the trend, where
we’re going – developing products to benefit our children.”

This article is being published as part of Earth Beats, an international and

collaborative initiative gathering 18 news media outlets from around the world to
focus on solutions to waste and pollution. Use the hashtag #EarthBeats on social
media to learn about other stories on the global fight for the environment. (Mateo,
Janvic, 2019)
 Waste-to-energy technologies in PH? 'Go zero waste instead'

According to (Geronimo, Jee Y., 2017). President Rodrigo Duterte is considering

the adoption of waste-to-energy facilities in the country. But environmental
scientist Jorge Emmanuel explains why this may not be a good idea.

It was in his first State of the Nation Address when President Rodrigo Duterte first
revealed his plan to explore the adoption of appropriate waste-to-energy facilities
in the country.

Following his speech, different environment groups quickly called on the President
to reconsider this plan since "incinerators masquerading as [waste-to-energy] are
false and expensive solutions to the garbage problem."

Waste incineration is banned under Philippine laws, such as the Philippine Clean
Air Act and the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act, but advocates believe
companies are still trying to sell incinerators in the country up to this day.

"Despite the incineration ban in the Clean Air Act, there are many companies that
are coming to the Philippines, trying to sell incinerators, but they're doing it by
calling it different names, like 'waste-to-energy,'" Jorge Emmanuel, a professor at
Silliman University, told Rappler on Wednesday, January 25.

"But when you look at the technology behind it, many of the technologies are
simply the standard incinerator, with the addition of heat recovery boiler or some
type of heat recovery," he added.

Emmanuel, a scientist who specializes in environment, renewable energy, public

health, and climate change, is one of the speakers during the 13th Zero Waste
International Conference held at the University of the Philippines Bahay ng
Alumni.

The Philippines is also celebrating the National Zero Waste Month this January.
(READ: To burn trash or not to? Debate in PH rages on)

On Wednesday, he gave an overview of the problem with incineration and waste-

to-energy technologies, while 3 international speakers shared solutions and stories
from United States, Europe, and China.

Speaking to Rappler after the event, Emmanuel urged Filipinos to solve its garbage
problem by going zero waste instead of using waste-to-energy technologies that
use high temperature to burn waste and generate electricity or other forms of
energy.

"The problem is that waste-to-energy plants produce some of the most toxic
materials known to humans, so by using waste-to-energy, we are releasing these
materials, substances called dioxins that stay in the environment for hundreds and
hundreds of years, that are toxic at very small concentrations, very tiny
concentrations," Emmanuel explained.

He added: "And that can cause different types of cancers, different reproductive
disorders in men and women, impacts on our children in their development, birth
defects – all of these have been associated, linked to these dioxins at very small
levels."

On Wednesday, he expressed his "strong concern" about "Japanese, Australian,

and French firms making the rounds, talking to a lot of [local government units] to
sell these waste-to-energy technologies."

He believes the Philippines does not have the technical capability to test dioxin
levels emitted by waste-to-energy technologies.

"It took the United States decades to develop the full capacity to do it, where they
can do it precisely and reliably…. In the Philippines, we don't, as far as I know,
even have any [laboratory] that has international accreditation, so how can we
validate what a vendor will claim, that their technology doesn't produce high levels
of dioxin?" Emmanuel said.

He said he has seen companies sell waste-to-energy technologies in countries in

Asia and Africa, even if they didn't pass the test in their own host countries.

"That's because many of these countries [in Asia and Africa] could not really
validate it on their own. In addition to that, once the technology's installed, how
can you monitor it on a continuous basis when we have a hard time even doing one
test of these dioxins? So we are not in the position to protect health and
environment," he added.

The cost of these waste-to-energy technologies is also "extremely high,"

Emmanuel said, since they come with air pollution control equipment.

"The danger is many of the vendors try to underutilize, sometimes they even
minimize the design to reduce the cost so they can make more money or to make it
affordable to a developing country, and yet those are substandard technologies," he
added.

Renewable energy

Aside from going zero waste and fully implementing ecological solid waste
management, Emmanuel proposed another alternative path to incineration and
waste-to-energy technologies: a shift to clean renewable energy.

"The nice thing about the Philippines is that we're blessed with tremendous solar,
wind, wave, geothermal power, or the potential for those, and so those are
the...renewable sources of energy that we need to move into not only because they
are cleaner and better for the environment, but they also address the global issue of
global warming, and we have such a huge potential for it in this country," he told
Rappler.

Take, for example, wave energy. Emmanuel said this is a new area that the
Philippines needs to explore since it could provide energy to coastal communities.

"So what I'm calling for is the move towards renewables, but also move towards
looking at clean energy storage to allow us to supplement cleaner power like
geothermal, which can provide baseload with intermittent power, like solar or wind
or wave…. Let's look at this instead of bringing technologies that will harm our
health, harm our environment, for not only decades but hundreds of years to
come," he added.

His call comes just as Environment Secretary Gina Lopez recently expressed her
"firm commitment" to approve in just two weeks applications for environmental
compliance certificate of renewable energy projects. (Geronimo, Jee Y., 2017)
 Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion in Indonesia, Malaysia and Philippines

According to Koto, J., Arief, D., Tasri, A., & Kamil, I. (2018). Ocean Thermal
Energy Conversion (OTEC) is a process that can produce electricity by using the
temperature difference between deep cold around 28 degree Celsius ocean water
and warm tropical surface waters around 6 degree Celsius. Malaysia, Indonesia and
the Philippines are located on the equator region which has high potential to
implement renewable OTEC technology. Indonesia has many potential locations to
build OTEC, among them is in Sumatera Utara, Bali, Flores Sea, Makassar Strait.
The OTEC is planned under General Plan of National Energy. The 11th Malaysia
Plan (2016-2020) aims to manage the 1st Public-Funded OTEC project of Pulau
Layang-Layang, Kuala Baram, Gemusut Kakap, and Pulau Bangi. Philippines as
located at geographical position near the equator had passed the Renewable Energy
Act of 2008 for OTEC project at Pangasinan, Zambales and Quezon. Koto, J.,
Arief, D., Tasri, A., & Kamil, I. (2018).
 Alternative framework for renewable energy planning in the Philippines

According to Fernando Roxas & Andrea Santiago(2016). Like many countries

striving to be responsible consumers of energy and conscious of the need to
mitigate the impact of climate change, the Philippines has, in both policy and
practice, shown a bias towards Renewable Energy (RE) sources. The country‫׳‬s
proportion of RE production in primary energy and distribution in electricity is
significantly higher than those of many Asian and European countries. However,
the Philippine National RE Program has adopted a strategy of aggressively
amassing RE capacity to the extent of tripling the capacity over the period 2011 to
2030.

The preoccupation with more megawatts rather than the value of RE beyond clean
energy has erected a bias against off-grid RE applications. Off-grid RE
applications can displace more expensive diesel generation and can enhance the
livelihood opportunities for communities. The insistence on focusing on megawatts
is threatening to bloat the current Feed-in-Tariff structure by causing large, grid-
connected applications to be seriously oversubscribed. This paper reviews the
current RE status in the Philippines and presents a simple alternative planning
paradigm in which the ability of RE technology to affect the livelihood of the
residents and the effectiveness of its energy delivery are used to distinguish the
utility of different RE technologies in off-grid and grid-connected areas. The
authors also describe an actual kW scale, off-grid application that addresses both
energy and economic poverty. Fernando Roxas & Andrea Santiago(2016)
The politics of energy and development: Aid diversification in the Philippines

According to Marquardt(2015). Energy-related development aid has diversified

significantly over time. With insights from eight donor-driven renewable energy
projects in the Philippines, this qualitative study highlights the effects of a
diversified development aid landscape on renewable energy development. The
comparison reveals both positive and negative results. On the one hand, the
Philippine government can benefit from competition among donors for national
policy advice. On the other hand, small-scale solar power demonstration projects
suffer from obstacles that should have been known already from previous donor-
driven interventions. The article recommends stronger forms of donor
coordination. A differentiation between national and local level projects turns out
to be beneficiary for the broader debate on aid diversification. This study is based
on field trips and semi-structured interviews with development cooperation
experts, their counterparts and other stakeholders of the Philippine energy sector.
Marquardt(2015)
 REFERENCES

(Mateo, Janvic, 2019). Earth Day: Revolutionary paint offers solution to air
pollution.

(Geronimo, Jee Y., 2017). Waste-to-energy technologies in PH? 'Go zero waste
instead'.

(Koto, J., Arief, D., Tasri, A., & Kamil, I. , 2018). Ocean Thermal Energy
Conversion in Indonesia, Malaysia and Philippines.

(Roxas, Fernando & Santiago, Andrea, 2016). Alternative framework for

renewable energy planning in the Philippines.

(Marquardt, Jens, 2015). The politics of energy and development: Aid

diversification in the Philippines