The use of fly ash wastes as inexpensive sorbents, mostly for heavy metal cations, is one method recycling the millions tons waste produced each year. In this paper, a ash-based geopolymer was used an adsorbent Cu2+ and Cd2+ from aqueous solution. To improve sorption efficiency, modified by incorporating titanium oxide (TiO2) nanoparticles that were synthesized hydrothermally annealed at temper...

In 2001 the European Environment Agency (EEA) published a report that analyzed 14 cases of technological developments that later on turned out to have negative side-effects and they identified 12 “late lessons” for current and future policy-makers to bear in mind when initiating new technological endeavors. This paper explores how the first lesson – “Acknowledge and respond to ignorance, uncert...

Innovative nanostructured treatments for stone conservation, based on dispersions of photoactive TiO2 nanoparticles, recently studied in our research group, provided interesting results after laboratory testing. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to accurately reproduce in the lab the complexity of field exposure conditions. It is then of crucial importance to evaluate the behaviour and dur...