The cluster of beige corrugated-iron sheds and silos don't look like much, but this unassuming factory in a suburb of Melbourne represents a potential revolution in greenhouse gas emissions. It's the first commercial enterprise in the world dedicated to transforming waste from power stations and blast furnaces into geopolymer concrete, a particularly promising green concrete.
The factory, owned by the company Zeobond, started operations in February this year. Unlike regular concrete, the chemical reactions that form this polymer-based alternative do not give off carbon dioxide or require high temperatures, which also lead to CO2 emissions. So it releases just 10 per cent to 20 per cent of the greenhouse gases associated with making the standard stuff.
The first customers for Zeobond's E-Crete will be individuals and local councils who will use it in small, non-safety-critical projects, such as building patios and walls on motorways that block sound, says company founder Jannie van Deventer, a chemical engineer at the University of Melbourne. If geopolymers like E-Crete prove to be durable, there is no reason why they should not replace regular concrete in a variety of applications, from high-rise buildings to bridges. So says Mark Drechsler of engineering consultancy Parsons Brinckerhoff, who is hoping to use E-Crete to build low-cost housing. "If you replaced just half the new concrete that will be needed over the next 10 years with geopolymers, it would be a reduction of almost a billion tonnes of extra CO2 each year at a time of global demand for reducing emissions," he says.
But how bad can concrete be for the environment? The main culprit is the ingredient Portland cement, a fine powder containing calcium, oxygen and silicon, which forms concrete when mixed with water, sand and rocks. To make Portland cement, calcium carbonate, in the form of limestone, and other raw materials such as clay, must be roasted at over 1,400°C. The resulting chemical reaction produces half a tonne of CO2 per tonne of cement. Over a third of a tonne of additional emissions come from burning the fuel to heat the cement kilns and transporting raw materials. Between 5 per cent and 8 per cent of global CO2 emissions are the result of cement production. With demand for concrete set to double in the next decade, the figures will only get more dismal.
“There is a need to change the product or change production methods to innovate. The major cement producers are scrabbling to increase and refocus their research capabilities on energy use and the environment,” says Fredrik Glasser, a cement scientist at the University of Aberdeen in the UK.
Cement manufacturers have reduced net emissions to some extent by building more efficient kilns and using greener alternatives to fossil fuels. Also helpful is the use of additives such as fly ash or slag, the waste-products of power stations and blast furnaces respectively. They either replace some of the cement or make its production more efficient. But those tweaks have reached their limits, and don't nearly compensate for the increase in cement production.
Enter geopolymer concretes, whose different chemistry could reduce CO2 emissions far more radically. The starting materials are silicon- and oxygen-containing compounds called silicates, and aluminium- and oxygen-containing aluminates, both of which are present in fly ash and slag waste. When alkali is added to silicates and aluminates, a polymerisation reaction occurs that binds them into a long chain-like molecule known as a geopolymer. Add in rocks and sand at the same time, and you have a geopolymer concrete. No CO2 is produced during polymerisation and no heating is required. An analysis of E-Crete’s production process by independent consultants showed that CO2 emissions are reduced by at least 80 per cent compared to producing Portland cement.
Over the past decade, geopolymers have been used for niche applications such as catalytic converters, fire-resistant components in Formula 1 racing cars, and fire insulation for passenger ships. But Zeobond is the first company to start making them commercially for construction projects.
One concern in the past was that geopolymers set too rapidly, which would make the concrete difficult to handle. Another was that they are more porous than regular concrete, making them vulnerable to decay. Although he will not go into details for proprietary reasons, van Deventer, whose team has studied geopolymer chemistry for over 15 years, claims to have solved those problems with subtle changes to the production process, for example, by carefully controlling the rate at which re-agents are added to the fly ash. What's more, unlike regular concrete, geopolymer bonds directly to internal steel reinforcements, which may provide an additional protective barrier, he says.
Geopolymer concretes have also been tested under some extreme circumstances, leading Van Deventer to believe they are just as strong as ordinary concrete. CSIC, Spain's largest public research organisation, has tested it as railway sleepers or cross-ties, the cross braces that support the rails on a railway track. It passed “with high marks”, says materials scientist Angel Palomo of the Eduardo Torroja Institute in Madrid, part of the CSIC. “From an engineering point-of-view, a sleeper is a very complex element, which is also subjected to very aggressive mechanical conditions and weather extremes,” he says. “The material is good enough for sleepers, so it will be good enough for many building parts.”
Whether it is as durable as standard concrete is less clear, but there are encouraging signs. Zeobond has tested geopolymers, including E-Crete, at very high temperatures and pressures, and for resistance to acids for short periods of time. Although geopolymer concretes perform well, the tests don’t exactly mimic what happens when concrete is put under strain for decades, says van Deventer.
However, his hopes were raised by older versions of a similar technology. Forty years ago in the Soviet Union, apartment buildings, water channels and roads were constructed using a concrete containing slag and high levels of alkali, which is only used in small amounts in regular concrete.
van Deventer joined forces with Pavel Krivenko, a cement engineer from the National University of Civil Engineering and Architecture in Kiev, Ukraine. When they took samples from the structures and analysed their microscopic structure, they found the material contained bonds between aluminates and silicates that resembled a geopolymer. Since the structures are still standing, van Deventer says modern geopolymers are likely to be as durable as ordinary concrete. The analysis will appear in an upcoming issue of ACI Materials Journal.
Uptake of geopolymer concrete is likely to be slow due to a lack of testing in the field — a perennial problem for any novel construction material. Nonetheless, the timing couldn't be better. Demand for green building materials in wealthy nations is expanding under the weight of environmental concerns, as well as in expanding economies with housing booms.
Geopolymer concretes also have some unique advantages. Made from waste materials, it is potentially cheap; it strengthens in a matter of hours rather than days; and it is more resistant to acid, fire and microbial attack than standard concrete. “I'm optimistic,” says Palomo. “Attitudes to the environment are changing and governments are pressing the industrial community to reduce their emissions.”
This article appeared in issue 2640 of New Scientist magazine, January 26, 2008.
