GREEN ATMOSPHERIC PLASMA-GENERATED ATOMIC OXYGEN TECHNOLOGY FOR RESTORATION OF WORKS OF ART

The MOXY mission represents an advanced technological and green innovation, which aims to empower cultural heritage professionals to preserve works of art for the future in a green and sustainable way. MOXY is venturing into new territory with roots in NASA research, bridging the gap between physics, engineering, aerospace, cultural heritage, and sustainability science, in pursuit of a breakthrough technology to conserve otherwise untreatable materials and preserve works of art for the future in a sustainable and green way. MOXY aims to deliver a non-contact cleaning system tailored for CH, based on space material from the Low Earth Orbit space environment: atomic oxygen (AO). Because of AO’s extremely short lifetime on the ground, the approach requires new technology, to produce and use AO simultaneously, which will be achieved by innovating a cold plasma process, investigating AO interactions with CH materials, and revealing the full potential in conservation. MOXY will deliver an unprecedented non-contact AO technology for cultural heritage. The AO cleaning process is non-liquid, volatile, non-thermal, and desirable for porous, fragile, and otherwise untreatable materials. AO will open new paths to treat smoke and fire damage, organic particle pollution, and biological contamination, as well as remove unwanted past conservation materials from porous substrates. Oxygen may be culturally accepted by indigenous communities, which generally do not consent to the use of chemicals on sacred and culturally sensitive objects.