Continuous-flow hydrothermal and solvothermal syntheses offer substantial advantages over conventional processes, producing high quality materials from a wide range of precursors.

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A note on versions:The version presented here may differ from the published version or from the version of record. If you wish to cite this item you are advised to consult the publisher's version. Please see the repository url above for details on accessing the published version and note that access may require a subscription. AbstractThis article is focused on assessing environmental benefits of self-cleaning coating (SCC) containing nanoparticles (NPs) applied on metal panels. ZnO NPs are incorporated in the coating to enhance the level of hydrophobicity, which enables a dramatic reduction in the need for surface maintenance. The key question evaluated in this paper is whether the overall environmental performance of nano-based SCC is better than the environmental performance of coating without NPs. Much of the paper is dedicated to a comparison of advanced polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) protective coating with an alternative coating in which part of the PVDF is replaced by ZnO NPs. An integral part of the paper represents a detailed environmental assessment of the key ingredient of the nano-enhanced coating, ZnO NPs produced by large-scale supercritical hydrothermal synthesis developed within the Sustainable Hydrothermal Manufacturing of Nanomaterials (SHYMAN) project. LCA results show that the coating with NPs performs better than the coating without NPs in all assessed impact categories. This is due to the elimination of environmental impacts during the use stage where no maintenance is needed in case of the coating with NPs. This reduction clearly outweighs the small additional environmental impacts of the production stage associated with the ZnO NPs.