After water, concrete is the most used resource by humans, and it’s production is one of the highest sources of CO2 emissions. Tom Schuler, president and CEO of Solidia Technologies, showcases an innovative way to create concrete that can potentially turn into a carbon sink to trap CO2 from air, while offering a viable building material.
“We use the same equipment and raw materials [as traditional cement industry], but we use less limestone, and we fire the kiln at a lower temperature, resulting in up to a 30 percent reduction in CO2 emissions. Our cement doesn’t react with water. We cure our concrete with CO2, and we get that CO2 by capturing waste gas from industrial facilities like ammonia plants or ethanol plants that otherwise would’ve been released into the atmosphere. During curing, the chemical reaction with our cement breaks apart the CO2, capturing the carbon to make limestone, and that limestone’s used to bind the concrete together. … When you combine the emissions reduction during cement production with the CO2 consumption during concrete curing, we reduce cement’s carbon footprint by up to 70 percent. And because we don’t consume water, we also save trillions of liters of water.”
To learn more you can watch Tom make a presentation here:
Freedom For Sustainability 