Abstract
Cultural heritage buildings of stone construction require careful restorative actions to maintain them as close to the original condition as possible. This includes consolidation and cleaning of the structure. Traditional consolidants may have poor performance due to structural drawbacks such as low adhesion, poor penetration and flexibility. The requirement for organic consolidants to be dissolved in volatile organic compounds may pose environmental and human health risks. Traditional conservation treatments can be replaced by more environmentally acceptable, biologically-based, measures, including bioconsolidation using whole bacterial cells or cell biomolecules; the latter include plant or microbial biopolymers and bacterial cell walls. Biocleaning can employ microorganisms or their extracted enzymes to remove inorganic and organic surface deposits such as sulfate crusts, animal glues, biofilms and felt tip marker graffiti. This review seeks to provide updated information on the innovative bioconservation treatments that have been or are being developed.
Highlights
Our stone cultural heritage is subject to weathering over the years
Optical Microscopy (OM) and Scanning Electron Microscopy coupled with Energy Dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM-EDX)
The results of this study indicated that final changes to the initial microbial populations were relatively small
Summary
Our stone cultural heritage is subject to weathering over the years. This deterioration is due to physical, chemical and biological factors acting synergistically that cause disfiguration and dissolution of the stone, an increase in porosity and overall weakening of the structure [1]. When the building is of historic and cultural importance, it is necessary that careful restorative action be taken, with the aim of returning the monument, as much as possible, to its original condition. This may involve removal of unwanted surface deposits (cleaning) and strengthening of degraded parts of the structure (consolidation), and replacement of blocks or whole sections of the structure. Cleaning can induce irreversible damage; a cost-benefit analysis should be considered in a prior assessment phase, in order to reduce potential risks to artwork [7]
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