Why & How To Make Concrete Green
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Concrete is simple, cheap, strong and lasts long. But the wonder material that’s all around us is responsible for 8% of global CO2 emissions — and it’s not easy to change that. So how can we build cities without killing the planet? In the video published by DW Planet A, on Jan 28, 2022, as “How to fix the world’s concrete problem“, below:
As part of the planning for a gardening project in our front yard, I was looking for ways to mitigate our carbon footprint in building with concrete. Did you know that concrete accounts for 8% of global CO2 emissions and it’s usage is set to skyrocket in the coming decades as the world’s population grows and moves towards more urban environments. So removing carbon from the process is a crucial part of the climate mitigation challenge. And now, several start-up companies have stepped up to meet that challenge, in the video published on Oct 2, 2022, by Just Have a Think, as “How to make concrete green!“, below:
Check out these companies: Solidia, CarbonCure, CarbiCrete, Sublime Systems, Brimstone,
- Solidia produces cement in traditional kilns but with a 50:50 ratio of limestone to sand instead of two-thirds to one-third. This means the reaction can run a t a much lower temperature which reduces energy use by about 30% and greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 40%. During curing process, CO2 is injected into the mix instead of water, reducing the reaction time from more than a week to only 24 hours. The injected CO2 is then trapped in the final solid product resulting in a claimed net overall CO2 emissions reduction of up to 70%.
- CarbonCure takes a bottle of CO2 gas to a concrete mixer and simply inject it into the ready-mix material. CarbiCure source their CO2 from industrial emitters, purifying it and then distributing it to concrete site in pressurized tanks that can be regularly refilled (just like your sodastream canister at home). As it is injected into the fresh concrete, a mineralization process embeds it permanently into the material. Additional CO2 in the mix has the benefit of increasing the compressive strength of the concrete. CarbonCure claims that 17 kg of CO2 can be saved for each cubic meter of concrete produced.
- CarbiCrete use a system called Carbonation Activation, which eliminates the need for cement in concrete altogether by replacing it in the mix with ground steel slag (by-product of the steel making industry). Their concrete mix is poured into molds and cured using CO2. That curing process (the concrete is cured with CO2 in a specialized absorption chamber) solidifies the CO2 and binds it together with the steel slag granules, giving the concrete its strength. CarbiCrete claims to capture about two kg of CO2 in a standard size concrete block which, in a typical U.S. production facility making concrete masonry units of CMUs, would mean a reduction of 20,000 tons of CO2 emissions, plus saving of about 4.4 million liters of water and the avoidance of 33,000 tons of landfill a year.
- Sublime Systems, founded by MIT electrochemist Leah Ellis and entrepreneur Yet Min Chiang, addressing both the carbon emissions from the cement calcination process and the carbon emission from the heating sources by developing an electrochemical solution that can do the job at ambient temperature, significantly reducing the energy input requirement and making it far easier to capture the resultant CO2. Since the process is entirely electrical, it can potentially be powered by 100% renewables, making the whole process carbon neutral.
- Brimstone uses the traditional Portland cement manufacturer except that Brimstone does not use limestone as one of the raw materials. They use different rocks that contain calcium, such as basalt. They use rocks such as calcium silicates (rather than calcium carbonates) meaning they don’t release CO2 when they’re converted into cement.
Every year, the production of cement accounts for 8 percent of global CO2 emissions. If the cement industry were a country, it would be the world’s third-largest emitter of CO2. One company working to reduce the carbon footprint of cement is New-Jersey based start-up, Solidia Technologies. Its cement mixture and curing process can cut CO2 emissions by up to 70 percent, in the video published by CNBC, on Sep 28, 2019, as “This Green Cement Company Says It Can Cut Carbon Dioxide Emissions“, below:
CarbonCure has figured out how to trap CO2 in concrete and make it stronger in the process, in the video published on Aug 1, 2018, by CNN, as “This concrete traps CO2 emissions forever| Mission Ahead“, below:
In the video published by CarbonCure Tech, in 2021, as “CarbonCure’s Concrete Technology: How it Works“, below:
In the video published by CarbiCrete, in 2021, as “CarbiCrete: The cement-free, carbon-negative concrete solution“, below:
Carbicrete’s pilot project is a disruptive technology that allows manufacturers to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by producing building materials without cement. The potential impact is huge: The company says its cement-free technology could cut greenhouse emissions from Canada’s cement plants by 10 percent, in the video published on Nov 23, 2017, by Pollution Probe, as “Meet the 2017 Pollutoin Probe Award Winner: Carbicrete“, below:
On this episode of the ARPA-E Energy Briefs series, ARPA-E Fellow Dr. Jake Russell and Sublime Systems Co-Founder & CEO Dr. Leah Ellis discuss Sublime Systems’ recent grant under ARPA-E’s Supporting Entrepreneurial Energy Discoveries (SEED) Exploratory Topic, including how their technology works, what impact it could have, and what it’s been like to work with ARPA-E, in the video published on Feb 8, 2022, by ARPA-E, as “ARPA-E Energy Briefs: Dr. Jake Russell & Dr. Leah Ellis Discuss Sublime Systems’ SEED Grant“, below:
Cody Finke Is a Scientist Good at Abandoning Science With Poor Financial Prospects Brimstone Energy Founder Cody Finke’s persistent refusal to persist may be the key to his success and critical to finding a path to a global net-zero carbon future. Cody has repeatedly made significant changes in his path. We’re not talking about pivots; we’re talking leaps. After being admitted to an extraordinarily prestigious joint MD-PhD program at the University of Southern California and CalTech, he quit. Three months into a program that many would kill to join, he dropped out. “I didn’t really like medicine,” he says, adding, “I wanted to have a large impact on the health of the planet or the health of people.” He observed that if he dropped out, his spot would be taken by someone equally capable of doing the same work. “Whereas I could go work on a problem that maybe has less traction and be more interesting.” So, he went to work at CalTech on wastewater treatment for low-income countries for the next three years. At that point, he performed an economic analysis of his work. He recognized that any technology he developed would have to be affordable. It wasn’t. So, on to the next thing: clean hydrogen. Making hydrogen from water electrolysis is something of a holy grail in cleantech circles. After two years, he began another economic analysis. He concluded that the area he was researching, the catalysts to make hydrogen, was “not a very big lever.” Finally, he observed that “the chances of water electrolysis, in general, being low cost and competing with fossil fuels as an energy source was very remote.” Looking to make yet another significant shift in his young career, he says, “I wanted to work on something that not many other people were working on so that I, as an individual, could have a large marginal impact.” He wanted to leverage his developing chemical skill set and settled on cement, which he notes “is a huge greenhouse gas problem, it’s responsible for about the same amount of greenhouse gases as cars.” Most of that carbon, about 60 percent, results from chemistry—not the use of energy to produce the cement. As Cody set out to develop better Portland Cement (the formal name of the primary ingredient in concrete, which has nothing to do with towns named Portland), he identified three “pillars”: Economics: Cody wanted to create a product that rational, economic actors would choose. Carbon neutrality: He wanted to ensure that the new cement would produce less carbon and, if possible, would be carbon neutral. Identical product: Finally, to avoid needing any regulatory support to make the product work, it had to be demonstrably identical to conventional cement. While still in pre-commercial development, Brimstone Energy is tracking successfully toward meeting all three goals. The critical difference is the rock Brimstone uses as the primary source for the lime in concrete—its essential element. Conventional cement is formed using limestone, which contains large amounts of trapped carbon dioxide. When heated to purify the lime, the carbon is released into the atmosphere. Brimstone Energy starts with a more common rock called calcium silicate—which is much more common than limestone. “We figured out a chemical process to extract the lime from these calcium silicates,” Cody says. “We don’t have any CO2 emissions from the rock, so we’ve totally eliminated that 60 percent of emissions that come from the rock.” Cody’s new technology still requires heating. Today, a purely economic actor would use fossil fuels to produce the heat. Even so, Cody says, the new cement would be carbon neutral. Credit chemistry. He explains, “Our rock also contains a compound or an element called magnesium. We separate that magnesium as an oxide and magnesium oxides passively absorb CO2.” The effect is large enough to offset the carbon emissions from heating. Of course, in years to come, the heat can likely be generated from renewable energy, allowing Brimstone Energy’s magnesium oxides to offset other greenhouse gas emissions. The startup is still operating in the laboratory. The global cement industry produces about 4 billion tons annually. Typical plants make millions of tons. “I would say optimistically we’ll be producing large quantities of cement in five years,” Cody says. “More conservatively, it’ll be ten years or maybe even a little bit longer before we’re producing millions of tons of cement.” Ultimately, Cody sees the plants as his product rather than the cement. “We think that the fastest way to decarbonizing is to work with all of these companies in order to install our plants for them and hopefully decommission their old plants and install new plants using our process,” he says. “So we’re working on a joint venture licensing business model with conventional producers.” in the video published on Feb 8, 2022, by Devin Thorpe, as “This Decarbonizing Startup Could Have Huge Impact Due to the Economic Focus of Founder Cody Finke“, below:
What’s needed now is for existing cement manufacturers and global construction industry to encourage, use, fund and support these small scale start-ups to start utilizing these low carbon alternatives asap. Rapid testing and integration of these new low carbon cement into building codes all over the world so the traditionally conservative and safety conscious developers can have the confidence that these products are a robust and durable plug-in replacement for traditional concrete.
In the video published by Bill Gates, as “How to make concrete green“, below:
In the video published by The Structural World, as “What is GREEN CONCRETE | How to Make Concrete Green“, below:
The federal new Inflation Reduction Act is now funding incentives for the use of low-carbon materials in public infrastructure and government buildings, perhaps, in time, local incentives for the use of low-carbon material for private homes will also become available.
Gathered, written, and posted by Windermere Sun-Susan Sun Nunamaker More about the community at www.WindermereSun.com
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