images: Alamy, ESA, Moderna Museet, NASA, Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wikimedia Commons
VISION & MISSION
The green transformation of cleaning technologies
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Preserving integrity and authenticity is a fundamental tenet of cultural heritage conservation. Tangible cultural heritage assets are increasingly threatened by carbon-based contaminants from pollution, unsustainable exploitation, vandalism, and fire, and cleaning treatments are essential for their preservation. As the conservation field progresses, there is an increased awareness of the impact of treatments that may bring unwanted changes. However, non-intervening exacerbates unwanted changes and deterioration. To make changes sustainable, as CH conservators we are prepared to go a long way to countermeasure unwanted changes and do all possible to minimise the unwanted changes from the treatment.
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Currently available treatments require contact with the surface, liquids, chemicals, and other means, which increase the carbon footprint. Their efficiency can be limited, and they can be detrimental to art materials, as well as harmful to health and the environment, and unsustainable in the long term. Conservators, equipped with only conventional means, now encounter fragile and untreatable cultural heritage surfaces where soiling cannot be removed at all without unacceptable changes.
A space environment material – atomic oxygen could provide a breakthrough solution and MOXY aims to redefine the paradigm in cleaning methodology by creating an effective and minimally invasive non-contact technology based on atomic oxygen to remove carbon-based contaminants from diverse cultural heritage surfaces without health and environmental concerns.
Vision
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Innovate to safeguard shared cultural heritage without harm to the materials, conservators’ health, and the environment
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Mission
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To deliver the atmospheric application of AO for non-contact cleaning of tangible cultural heritage assets to preserve them for the future in a green and sustainable way.
Summary Value Proposition
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Green, safe for health & environment: reduces the carbon footprint of treatments, waste, and reliance on chemicals. By-products are negligible and environmental.
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Non-contact and non-liquid: suitable for friable, mechanically unstable, liquid-sensitive materials.Minimally invasive and non-mechanical. The atomic surface area of contact with volatile species is much less intense than with fluids.
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Volatile, non-thermal: Can access contaminants in porous and complex 3D matrixes. Will not drive or trap the contaminants deeper into the pores.
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Culturally accepted: Ethical eco-conscious choice, preserving both cultural heritage, health, and the environment. Indigenous communities do not consent to the use of man-made materials treating rock art and sacred objects. Oxygen as a natural element would be culturally acceptable.