Study of a 'Conservation soft box' for the preservation of cultural heritage
Project duration: 2023-2026
Funding: Programme agreement between the Autonomous Province of Bolzano and Eco Research – three-year period 2023 – 2025
Contact person: Massimo Donegà
Project description:
Thanks to the agreement with Eurac Research (from 2024 becoming a partner of Eco Research), from an idea of the head of the conservation department of the Institute for the Study of Mummies at Eurac Research, Dr. Marco Samadelli, the study project to develop a conservation system for cultural heritage has begun.
The long-term preservation of cultural heritage according to the conservation standards of museum collections is a challenge that confronts conservators with many questions. Organic artefacts, e.g. textiles, paper, wood, or biological remains such as mummies, due to their delicate structure, require special measures to prevent chemical, physical and microbiological deterioration.
As a result of modern analysis techniques and thanks to the new polymeric materials offered by industry, it has been possible to design and produce innovative containers for the preservation of cultural property. The device developed as a prototype in this study is called Conservation Soft Box (CSB).
The aim of the project is to identify the best materials for creating the conservation boxes and then to create a controlled atmosphere inside the box specific to the individual cultural object. In this way, the aim is to achieve the goal of prolonging the preservation life of cultural goods, preventing their degradation for as long as possible.
Eco Research, with its year-long experience in the field of indoor ambient air, is involved in this project in the selection of building materials, providing advice and analytical assistance to determine the concentrations of aldehydes and VOCs and to study techniques for their removal.
Between 2023 and 2024, as a result of the analyses conducted, once the materials required for the production of the CSB had been identified, a system for removing latent VOCs was also tested and found to be effective.
In this study, the safety of CSB from a chemical point of view is fundamentally demonstrated, as well as the versatility of construction and the availability of materials, which prove that this conservative proposal can be considered state-of-the-art.
The ultimate goal of this study is to demonstrate how this idea for conservation can be considered the future of cultural heritage valorisation.
Partner: