The reproduction of fire-born soot for comparative cleaning tests on heritage objects
This work describes the design of reproducible mock-ups with controlled soot deposition, created to support comparative cleaning tests within the EU Horizon MOXY project. The latter develops atmospheric, plasma-generated, monoatomic oxygen as a cleaning method to remove (amongst others) fire-born soot from heritage objects. A literature review highlights the complexity of soot while revealing a lack of focus on the representativeness of artificial soot in previous studies. We benchmarked two approaches: (I) indirect/cold application of pre-fabricated soot and (II) direct/hot application via ongoing combustion. The results demonstrate that direct combustion yields soot with markedly different physical and chemical characteristics. Chemical analysis (Raman, XRPD, TGA, EGA-MS, XPS) and microscopic imaging (3D optical, SEM) revealed differences in composition, morphology, and deposition behaviour on substrates like paper, silk, paint and plaster. We selected the 'smoke drum' method as the most practical and reproducible approach for mimicking fire-born soot in heritage cleaning research.
Authors
- Karen Leus (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7753-3935)
- Gianluca Pastorelli (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6926-1952)
- Raffaella Fontana (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7663-1277)
- Ilaria Bonaduce (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0346-8373)
- Rino Morent (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6336-1485)
- Tomas Markevičius (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2322-9540)
- Pascal Van Der Voort (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1248-479X)
- Catarina Pires (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8579-4628)
- Geert Van der Snickt (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9985-0678)
- Søren Krogh Jensen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9852-4774)
- Klaas Jan van den Berg (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8145-1262)
- Anton Yu Nikiforov (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2255-6419)
- Kirill Shumikhin (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0008-4967-0386)
- Gert Nuyts (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9086-2610)
- Nan Yang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8116-8750)
- Alice Del Favo (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7960-2546)
- Elena Ducoli
- Marta Cremonesi
Institutions
- University of Pisa (IT)
- University of Antwerp (BE)
- Ghent University (BE)
- Instituto de Óptica "Daza de Valdés" (ES)
- National Gallery of Denmark (DK)
- National Research Council (IT)
- University of Amsterdam (NL)
Publication Details
- Journal
- npj Heritage Science
- Published
- 2025-11-21
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s40494-025-02067-1
- Citations
- 2
- Primary Topic
- Building materials and conservation
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 3.34
Funders
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek
- Universiteit Gent