ThepositiveeffectsofairpurificationintheDutchStateArchives.docVIP

The Positive Effects of Air Purification in the Dutch State Archives Part 1: Experimental Set up and Air Quality by MARGA DE FEBER, JOHN HAVERMANS ERIC CORNELISSEN Introduction Many national and international research programmes study the acidification of cultural heritage1-5. Acidification of paper takes place as a consequence of internal and external factors and this process can only be ceased in one way: deacidification. Since de-acidification usually is a laborious and expensive business, research is carried out to develop suitable mass deacidification methods. At present only a few methods are fulfilling the requirements as given by the Dutch State Archives: the DEZ gaseous deacidification method6, and the modified Bookkeeper process. The first one however, is now discontinued. Nevertheless, it will take a lot of time to deacidify the 80-km extensively acidic paper collection of the Dutch State Archives. Therefore measures must be taken to prevent further acidification of archival materials. One way to achieve this is for instance air purification3. Previous research has shown that air pollutants like SOx, and NOx accelerate the ageing of paper, and that reactivity is increased with increasing relative humidity2,4,7,8. Air purification therefore possibly decreases the influence of external factors on the acidification and as such reduces the deterioration of paper by air pollutants. It must be emphasized however that air purification cannot stop the process of acidification itself, since internal factors arise from the paper itself19. Concerning the internal factors, several authors stated that acidification is generally less occurring in alkaline papers, and moreover they stated that it is improper to draw conclusions based on mechanical properties only10. In 1994, the Dutch State Archives put into use a new air conditioning and purification system11,12. At the same time TNO was commissioned to investigate the effects of this newly installed system. The proj