Agenda

Manuele Musolino, Dipartimento di Scienze Ambientali, Informatica e Statistica

Abstract:
Since 2006, when the REACH regulation took effect, several chemicals commonly used in the Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage practices have been listed as toxic to environment and human and literally banned. In this scenario, a sustainable methodology to synthesise and screen libraries of new low-environmental impact products, suitable for removing graffiti and murals from historic building, masonries and stone artworks has been developed. This approach provided two families of novel two-component systems by combining silica sol-gel chemistry and dialkyl carbonates chemistry. The solid matrixes were silica gels, which were synthesised either in acidic non-aqueous condition or in basic aqueous conditions by using ethylene and propylene glycols as organic co-solvents. Dialkyl carbonates, such as dimethyl carbonate were the green organic solvents to load into the gel. The efficiency of these new systems in adsorbing/trapping commercial blue and red aerosol spray paints was investigated through an ad hoc test tube extraction evaluation and on mock stained samples of Istrian stones. Data provided by NMR spectroscopy and FT-IR spectroscopy led to the identification of promising cleaning agents, paving the way to their application to remove graphic vandalism in Forte Marghera site.

Bio Sketch:
Dr. Manuele Musolino After the graduation in organic chemistry at the University of Milan in 2006, Manuele Musolino has worked as medicinal chemist for both academia (University of Milan) and industry (Sanofi-Aventis Spa) covering the role of research assistant. In 2012, he was awarded a Scottish Universities Life Sciences Alliance (SULSA) 4 years PhD fellowship in Medical Sciences, which was successfully carried out at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. Since March 2017 he has been working as a Research Fellow at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, deeply involved in the development and used of the dialkyl carbonates (DACs) chemistry as a valid and prospective alternative to the halogen chemistry.