Displaying items by tag: research and development

India: Adani Cement subsidiaries ACC and Ambuja Cements have launched the Cement and Concrete Research and Development Facility at Kalamboli in Maharashtra. Dion News Service has reported that the focus of the centre will lie in product development, productivity enhancement and increasing the efficiency of cement and concrete production.

Adani Cement CEO Ajay Kapur said "Our new research and development facility is our reinforcement towards our collective commitment to pushing boundaries, driving innovation, and addressing industry challenges."

New Zealand: Fletcher Building's Concrete Division, comprising Firth, Golden Bay, and Winstone Aggregates, has stepped up its commitment to developing innovative and increasingly sustainable concrete solutions with the opening of New Zealand's first commercial Concrete Innovation Lab, in Christchurch, South Island.

The Concrete Innovation Lab has been established to fast track the development of new concrete products and solutions with a particular focus on innovating to decarbonise concrete. The aim being to support customers as their building needs and specifications change in response to the need to build for climate change.

Dene Cook, Divisional Technical Manager, said "As an industry we have committed to decarbonising concrete, with the Global Cement & Concrete Association (GCCA), detailing a roadmap to net zero by 2050. Fletcher Building is excited by this challenge and the work we will do in the Concrete Innovation Lab will turn this from a paper commitment to a reality."

US: Researchers at Washington State University (WSU) have developed a method for making low-carbon concrete using cement and biochar, a type of charcoal made from organic waste that is nearly as strong as standard concrete. The team, led by doctoral student Zhipeng Li, strengthened the biochar with concrete wastewater. The biochar was able to suck up to 23% of its weight in carbon dioxide from the air.

Previous attempts to add biochar as a substitute in cement have significantly reduced the strength of the resulting concrete. However, the WSU project found that by treating the biochar with concrete washout wastewater it was able to add up to 30% biochar to cement mixtures. The paste made of the biochar-amended cement was able to reach a compressive strength after 28 days comparable to that of ordinary cement. The researchers used calcium in the concrete washout water to induce the formation of calcite, which benefits the biochar and, eventually, the concrete that incorporates it.

Xianming Shi, professor in the WSU Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, said, “We’re very excited that this will contribute to the mission of zero-carbon built environment.” He added, “Most other researchers were only able to add up to 3% biochar to replace cement, but we’re demonstrating the use of much higher dosages because we’ve figured out how to engineer the surface of the biochar.”

The synergy between the highly alkaline wastewater that contains a lot of calcium and the highly porous biochar meant that calcium carbonate precipitated onto or into the biochar, strengthening it and allowing for the capture of carbon dioxide from the air. A concrete made of the material would be expected to continue sequestering CO2 for the lifetime of the concrete, typically 30 years in pavement or 75 years in a bridge.

The researchers have been working with the WSU Office of Commercialization to protect the intellectual property and have filed a provisional patent application on their carbon-negative concrete work. They recently received a seed grant from the Washington Research Foundation to produce more data for a variety of use cases. They are also actively seeking industry partners from the building and construction sector to scale up production for field demonstrations and licensing this WSU technology.

US: A team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has developed a new method to sequester CO₂ in concrete before curing it. The method is based on the addition of bicarbonate of soda, which reacts with cement to produce a calcium carbonate-calcium silicone hydrate composite. The Journal of Engineering has reported that the method adds the benefits of CO₂ mineralisation during production and casting, doubling the mechanical performance of early-stage concrete. It also eliminates the effects of carbonation reactions in cured concrete, which weaken the concrete by lowering its alkalinity, which accelerates the corrosion of rebar. The method has the potential to sequester 15% of CO₂ emissions from cement production.

The team said “The pre-curing capacity of concrete to sequester CO₂ has been largely underestimated and underutilised. Our new discovery could further be combined with other recent innovations in the development of lower carbon footprint concrete admixtures to provide much greener, and even carbon-negative, construction materials.”

India: A team at SRM Institute of Science and Technology has patented a new concrete paving block produced using fibres from waste printed circuit board (WPCB). The refuse-derived material will replace some sand and clay in the concrete mix. SRM Institute of Science and Technology said that India generates 2Mt/yr of electronic waste (e-waste), and additionally imports this type of waste from other countries. Besides being non-biodegradable, WPCB is contaminated with colouring chemicals.

The developers said "The steadily rising volume of electronic waste poses a serious hazard to human health and the environment."

Australia: First Graphene has partnered with Suvo Strategic Minerals to develop graphene-enhanced metakaolin for use in cement and concrete production. Metakaolin is a pozzolanic material derived from kaolinite clay. The partners believe that the technology has commercial potential to improve concrete performance and reduce CO₂ emissions.

China: China Building Materials Academy (CBMA) has patented a new 3D printing method which uses short rebars to reinforce printed layers. The developer says that this will enable builders to ensure structural strength without the disruption caused to 3D printing by the long rebars of conventional building skeletons.

CBMA said that "An inverted U-shaped or inverted L-shaped short rebar is vertically inserted into the cement slurry layer, wherein the bending mechanism comprises two bending members, separately disposed on two sides of a clamp."

UK: Denmark-based architecture fund Henrik Frode Obel Foundation has named Seratech as winner of its Obel Award 2022. The award recognises architectural contributions to global development. Seratech has developed an olivine-based composite cement produced using CO₂ from flue emissions, which can sequester double the CO₂ of ordinary Portland cement (OPC). When used as 40% of a blend with OPC, it is able to completely offset the emissions of concrete production.

Team member Barnaby Shanks said "The beauty of the idea is that you can just use it as normal concrete. There are other carbon-neutral materials, but they can be limiting because they can only be precast, cured in a lab in special conditions and shipped elsewhere. We want people to retain the freedom to use concrete the way that they are used to. We don’t want to limit people in any way because we’ll just lessen the amount of impact we can have."

Canada: Investment bank BDC Capital has invested US$3.7m in concrete testing technologies supplier Giatec. BDC Capital hopes that the investment will further the development of CO₂-reducing technology and AI-based concrete testing.

Giatec CEO Pouria Ghods said "The BDC Capital investment will propel Giatec's expansion into international markets and accelerate our innovation in CO₂-reducing technology, moving the concrete industry towards carbon neutrality. BDC has a long history of supporting emerging Canadian cleantech firms in their growth through exports, research and development. We at Giatec are looking forward to working with BDC in our mission to revolutionise the concrete industry and to create yet another success story for the BDC cleantech practice.”