Revolutionary Technology Produces Eco-Friendly Concrete

The manufacture of concrete is complex. It is created by mixing a chemically inert mineral aggregate, a binder, chemical additives, and water. But, many of its effects on the atmosphere is harmful. So, a professor at Rutgers University has developed a flexible method to control low-temperature water reactions. He has invented a revolutionary technology i.e., eco-friendly concrete to be applied to a number of products.

The first of these composite-based products making headlines is Solidia Concrete. This eco-friendly concrete reduces efflorescence – the grainy, salty coating on concrete from water or other liquids. It absorbs less than 2 percent water and has a compressive strength of roughly 10,000 psi.

Revolutionary Technology Produces Eco-Friendly Concrete

Professor Richard Riman said, “Ultimately, what we’d like to be able to do is create a ‘Materials Valley’ here, where this technology can start one company after another, small, medium and large businesses. It’s a foundational or platform technology for solidifying materials that contain ceramics, among other things. They can be pure ceramics, ceramics, and metals, ceramics and polymers – a really wide range of composites.

Generally, a concrete require high heat to make. The problem is that it emits CO2 when the calcium carbonate breaks into calcium oxide and excess carbon dioxide. Even, its manufacturing process also creates 5% of carbon emissions.

According to Riman, this reactive hydrothermal liquid-phase densification (rHLPD) technology rarely goes above 240 degrees Celsius. It also can reduce the carbon footprint by up to 70 percent.

I looked at how shellfish make ceramics at low temperatures, like carbonate crystals, and then looked at what people can do with water to make landing strips in Alaska and I said we should be able to do this with ceramics but use a low-temperature chemical process that involves water,” he added.

We developed processing technology that allows you to drop the technology right into the conventional world of concrete and cement without having to make major capital expenditures typically encountered when a technology is disruptive to the marketplace. We plan to do the same thing in the advanced materials business.

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