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Titanium dioxide is a well-known substance for its photocatalytic properties. The aim of this article is to describe the influence of humidity and temperature on the self-cleaning properties of construction surfaces covered with a layer of titanium dioxide (further labeled as TiO2). Its bandgap allows for the use of its photocatalytic properties strictly when exposed to the UV irradiation. The physico-chemical characteristics of the used TiO2 were investigated and described using analytical methods: x-ray diffraction spectroscopy (XRD), diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The experiments carried out aimed to identify the effect of humidity and temperature on the self-cleaning performance of TiO2 coated surfaces. The effect of humidity was tested at 20, 40, 60 and 80 % of relative humidity in testing chambre, the temperature was kept constant at 20 °C. The effect of temperature was tested for the 10, 20 and 30 °C, and the relative humidity was kept constant at 60 %. It was observed that increasing of relative humidity always led to higher self-cleaning performance. With respect to the temperature effect, a more complicated relationship was observed between the temperature and self-cleaning performance. The lowest self-cleaning ability was observed for the samples tested at 20 °C. The highest self-cleaning effect was observed for samples tested at 10 °C; this effect was slightly lower for samples tested at 30 °C. The best self-cleaning performance was observed for the experimental conditions of 80% RH and 10°C. Relative humidity was identified as a key factor influencing the self-cleaning ability of TiO2 coated cement pastes.
Keywords: Photocatalysis, titanium dioxide, cement pastes, self-cleaning properties© This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.