Mitigation of Pollution-induced Deterioration of Digital Prints through the Use of Enclosures

Abstract

The potential for common enclosures to reduce or prevent pollutant-induced deterioration of inkjet materials was investigated, with the specific research question being: Can any of the various commonly-used enclosure designs and materials (envelopes/boxes, paper/plastics) be used to effectively reduce or prevent the damage to digital prints caused by Ozone or Nitrogen Dioxide air pollution? The results indicate clear guidelines how to best proceed to mitigate pollutant gas damage. Polyester sleeves show by far the greatest potential for both pollutants over all tests conducted, which indicates this benefit may extend to the parts-per-billion range. Increasing ppm values and equally reducing exposure times to create the same ppm-days exposure did not always result in the same color change to the prints inside or outside enclosures. This importantly indicates extended time periods and lower concentrations could mean an enclosure's effectiveness in preventing damage from pollution could be in fact much lower than that observed in highly accelerated testing (as seen in this work and elsewhere). This raises questions regarding the suitability of such techniques to appraise the efficacy of enclosures employed to deter pollution damage caused over longer periods (decades) at real world environmental pollution levels.