GREENART

Project Info

European Cultural Heritage (CH) is a crucial resource that must be maintained, preserved and made accessible, to counteract degradation enhanced by unfavourable environmental conditions and climate changes. Conservation methodologies lack durability, sustainability and cost-effectiveness, and are typically based on energy-consuming processes or non-environmentally friendly materials. To cope with these issues, GREENART proposes new solutions based on green and sustainable materials and methods, to preserve, conserve and restore cultural heritage, as follows:

1) Protective coatings based on green materials from waste and plant proteins, with self-healing and reversibility characteristics, possibly functionalised with organic/inorganic nanoparticles to impart volatile organic compound (VOC) capture, anti-corrosion and barrier behaviours;
2) Foams and packaging materials made by biodegradable/compostable polymers from renewable sources (polyurethanes and natural fibres) to control T/RH;
3) Consolidants based on natural polymers from renewable sources, to mechanically strengthen weak artifacts;
4) Gels and cleaning fluids inspired by the most advanced systems currently available to conservators, improving them according to the green and circular economy;
5) Green-tech solutions for monitoring CH assets non-invasively against pollutants and environmental oscillations.

Life-cycle assessment and modelling will favour the “safe-by-design” creation of affordable solutions safe for craftspeople, operators and the environment, and minimise energy consumption in monitoring museum environments. Such a holistic approach is created in GREENART through a multidisciplinary partnership that gathers hard and soft sciences and engineering, including academic centres, innovative industries and SMEs, conservation institutions and professionals, museums whose collections hold masterpieces in need of conservation, public entities and policy makers. The latter will favour training and dissemination activities to make stakeholders familiar with the new methods.