Low emission concrete:
concrete: Recently in Manchester, a new low-emission concrete made its commercial debut and has caused a stir in the construction industry. Concrete is an essential component of any construction projects, with its high compressive strength providing structural integrity to many buildings and infrastructure. However, unbeknownst to many, cement and concrete production is the world’s largest industrial contributor to carbon emissions, with the whole industry responsible for 8% of global emissions (Lord, M. et al. 2017).
This new form of concrete, known as Concretene, provides concrete structural strength by implementing graphene in the production of the concrete. This allows for the concrete mix to require less raw materials, as well as less steel reinforcements as Concretene has significantly more tensile capacity than regular concrete (McDermott 2021). This reduction in materials and steel can reduce emissions by as much as 30%. Furthermore, graphene has the additional property of accelerating the bonding process between the different materials in the concrete mixtures – Concretene has been able to achieve the equivalent strength of regular concrete after the 28-day curing process in only 12 hours!
Despite all the advantages Low emission concrete offers, however, the biggest factor in this new concrete’s lack of commercial use is due to the difficulty to mass produce graphene. Graphene can be easily formed at smaller scales, with sheet sizes such as 10×10mm being commercially available, but in the construction industry, much large sheets are needed, and in such cases, it can be very difficult and expensive to acquire sheets of the appropriate size. As technology evolves and further studies are conducted on graphene, mass production of graphene sheets in various sizes will eventually become accessible, as a result, it is very likely that we will see Concretene become the industry standard in the near future.
References:
Lord, M. et al. 2017, Rethinking Cement – Cement production is the world’s single biggest industrial cause of carbon pollution, Beyond Zero Emissions, Accessed 1st December 2021, <https://bze.org.au/research_release/rethinking-cement/>.
McDermott, A 2021, The ‘secret sauce’ causing a stir in construction, Institute of Civil Engineers, Accessed 1st December 2021, <https://www.ice.org.uk/news-and-insight/the-civil-engineer/november-2021/secret-sauce-causing-a-stir-in-construction>.
Johnson, L & Meany, J.E. 2018, Mass-Producing Graphene, American Scientist, Accessed 1st December, <https://www.americanscientist.org/article/mass-producing-graphene>.
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