Effects of Salts on the Conservation of Cultural Heritage: Decay and Measures

Dear Colleagues,

We would like to invite you to submit your work to this Special Issue of Heritage focused on “Effects of salts on the conservation of Cultural Heritage: decay and measures”. Salt weathering is considered as one of the most frequent and serious problem that affects porous materials used on Cultural Heritage. The damage caused by the presence of soluble salts can endanger, in the case of cultural heritage, the historic-artistic value of the property, since it is a non-renewable resource with unique and irreplaceable value or even put its perpetuation at risk, due to the development in the worse scenarios of structural problems. For this reason, achieve a deep knowledge about the causes that favor the damage caused by this agent, and also knowing and understanding the physical operation and the efficacy of the different techniques that are currently available for salts removal or for minimizing their impact, are both crucial aspects to achieve an effective protection.

According to the above considerations, this Special Issue is based on reviews and researches focused on analysing the different aspects related to the damage that this agent can cause when crystallizing in a material and the strategies or techniques that can reduce or remove their damage. In particular, this Issue covers the following topics of interest:

• Source of salts.
• Transport phenomena in porous media.
• Crystallization pressure in the built environment.
• Environmental conditions that promote the phase change of salts.
• Influence of previous surface treatments (for example: consolidation) on the degree of damage caused by salts.
• Improvements in protocols and procedures of current treatments.
• New sustainable desalination strategies or techniques.
• Non-invasive analytical techniques to monitor salt weathering.
• Case studies dealing with salt weathering and/or their treatment.

This special issue will also be open to other topics, which have not been recorded in the previous points specifically, but are related to the main topic of this issue (salt weathering).

Dr. Jorge Feijoo
Dr. Monica Alvarez de Buergo
Dr. Rafael Fort
Dr. Miguel Gomez-Heras
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Heritage is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Salt weathering
• Soluble salts
• Crystallization pressure
• Desalination
• Poultices
• Inhibitors
• Electrochemistry