Cement that eats CO2

Revealed: The cement that eats carbon dioxide

Tuomo Siitonen Architects´ plan for apartments in downtown Helsinki

Cement accounts for 5% of the world’s CO2 emissions – more than aviation. Now British engineers have discovered a new form of cement that instead reduces CO2 emissions. Cement is the key ingredient in concrete. In Finland, concrete is the most common material for building bearing structures of high-rise apartment houses.  Scientists predict, that worldwide, the demand for cement will grow by 50% in the years to come.

Cement, a vast source of planet-warming carbon dioxide, could be transformed into a means of stripping the greenhouse gas from the atmosphere, thanks to an innovation from British engineers.

Making traditional cement results in greenhouse gas emissions from two sources: it requires intense heat, and so a lot of energy to heat up the ovens that cook the raw material, such as limestone. That then releases further CO2 as it burns. But, until now, noone has found a large-scale way to tackle this fundamental problem.

The new cement, based on magnesium silicates, not only requires much less heating, it also absorbs large amounts of CO2 as it hardens, making it carbon negative. Set up by chief scientist at Novacem, Nikolaos Vlasopoulos and his colleagues at Imperial College London, the innovation has already attracted the attention of major construction companies and investors.

VIA > The Guardian

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