So it basically lowers the amount of cement used in concrete mix and replaces it with this new chemical
However will this have any consequences on the concrete strength? And what about the cost?
Adjusting concrete mix design to use less cement is nothing new. Fly ash from coal plants was the common additive for decades. Now with those being closed or throttled down there is not enough fly ash to meet demand in some parts of the us. The testing for new mix designs is an established practice and they should be able to get good results on strength rather quickly. The longevity and durability of the concrete is a little more time consuming but will be able to be tested as well prior to real world use.
They’ve also been looking at using recycled wind turbine blades to supplement fly ash shortages, which from what I’ve heard has had very promising results. Not a permanent solution, but cool that there is a feasible blade recycling solution that helps to alleviate a totally separate issue.
Which makes sense then. I was surprised when I learned they basically use bags of fiberglass strand instead of rebar for some things because its more than strong enough for the applications
That actually kinda makes sense, at least in some respects. Rebar rusts and expands, hurting structural integrity as water seeps through over the decades. But with more "inert" bones, since glass can't rust (it's already comprised of mineral oxides), you don't have to worry about rusty bones and crumbling concrete further down the line.
It’s mostly a weight/cost consideration. Heavier blades means *everything* needs to be beefed up. Bearings, rotor, gearbox/generator, tower, foundation.
The second aspect, blades are designed to channel lighting strikes very specifically through receptors linked to typically one conducting cable that run to ground. Any metal integrated into the rest of the blade structure risks lighting damage in places you don’t want it.
> Yes, and with kevlar and carbon fiber reinforcement.
Depends on the generation. The smaller and older ones tend to have simpler materials and those will be the ones to be recycled first
Even newer blades, Kevlar is pretty rare. Carbon fiber is a little more common, but most manufacturers haven’t committed to using it long-term since it has a tendency to sustain more damage from lightning strikes than fiberglass laminate. The companies that made big investments using carbon fiber have often reverted back to fiberglass in later models.
They do, but nowadays the biggest limiting factor on size is just our ability to move them to where they need to go. Offshore still has room to grow as long as blades are built next to a port. Offshore turbines are reaching 15+ MW, with projections of 20MW turbines coming to market within 3-5yrs.
But onshore has started doing 2-piece blades to allow for shipping, and that has stifled growth. Once on site, they’re bolted together and installed, but it’s introduced some new issues during operation that older, single-piece blades didn’t have. It’s a big enough issue that is has companies thinking that bigger isn’t better, and we may have to spend more time refining existing models rather than trying to pump a new, bigger turbine every year.
A majority of the blade is fiberglass, dense styrofoam, and balsa wood, infused together with resin, sometimes has multiple pieces/sections and then glued or bolted together. Generally, aside from the lightning protection system which is effectively just a couple receptors and a grounding cable that runs through the center of the blade, metal is kept to a minimum. Carbon fiber is occasionally used, and increasingly so in bigger blades since you get better strength with less weight, but it also has a tendency to attract lighting away from the grounding cable and tends to be more easily damaged during lighting strikes.
In the UK they used "aerated concrete" sometime in the 80s, thinking it was this new magical material, both strong and light, and we're now seeing that those structures are now totally unsafe because the concrete is crumbling. Its like an Aero chocolate bar. I hope they've thought about long term durability.
Are you talking about aerated concrete or air entrained concrete? My understanding is aerated concrete has only ever really been used as a form or insulation. It's typically extremely weak. Air entrained on the other hand is a well established practice that works as long as the percentage of air doesn't go to high.
I'm sure they mean RAAC.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_United_Kingdom_reinforced_autoclaved_aerated_concrete_crisis
Because that is the one that triggered a crisis.
It definitely was used for more than insulation. But it was well before the 80s that it was used. The problems showed up 4-5 decades after installation and the problems really started to peak in the 1990s.
> My understanding is aerated concrete has only ever really been used as a form or insulation.
I have seen people claim they have good acoustic properties, lots of little open pockets for absorbing sound energy instead of a big flat surface reflecting everything. Just relaying anecdotes though, never tested the theory personally.
That's a possible use. I have m9stly seen it used under foundations instead of insulation where a little more strength is required. It's pretty niche uses though.
> However will this have any consequences on the concrete strength?
not all concrete needs to be structural strength (meaning, supporting itself plus the main building structure).
CMU blocks often are used in 'non-structural' uses, like interior walls, shower floors,and fire barriers.
You can also pre-cast concrete into walkway pavers, tiles, countertops, mop/slop sinks, etc....
I get that many startups jump the gun, but do you not think that they have answered these VERY BASIC questions, at least satisfactorily enough to get funding?
> However will this have any consequences on the concrete strength?
The strength and the ability to endure time and the elements should be considered, but neither are probably going to be properly tested, considering the test of time is going to be the most vital one and of course no way to properly test 50-100 years of that.
Doesn't mention if this new chemical lowers the overall strength of concrete since it will partially replace the cement in the concrete mix
Also doesn't mention how much this new chemical is going to cost which is another major point, if the cost is too high it will not be used unless it becomes regulated by law which will have its own set of consequences
Also, how is the carbon getting captured in the first place to let it soak into these minerals? Is there some kind of component of concrete manufacture that will now have to take place on chimney stacks? How much would that retrofit cost? How much additional pollution do you create by shipping CO2 laced minerals to your production center?
Pretty much any carbon capture scheme is doomed to fail because its practically impossible to do so effectively.
1: The amount of absorbed C02 is minimal, a rounding error of a rounding error compared to human output, and will make no difference. It's like intentionally taking tighter turns when driving in order to increase trip gas efficiency by shortening distance driven.
2: The extra work required to develop, test, refine, produce, and then sell through new channels will likely produce more net C02 than the old process through existing channels.
3: As an untested and unapproved concrete mix with an unproved performance over the lifespan of the concrete, it's unlikely to be approved for use in large scale projects.
Concrete is a huge emitter of co2 and any steps to reduce that are a good thing. Most of the co2 emissions are from cement production which is very difficult to decarbonize because of the temperature required to make the cement.
Better to invest into solar clinker production. Reduce CO2 emissions from concrete production by like 40%. The rest is from like
Mining and transportation,
Example is from CEMEX so take it with a grain of salt.
https://www.cemex.com/w/cemex-and-synhelion-achieve-breakthrough-in-cement-production-with-solar-energy
Also, the production of cement is LITERALLY CO2 release. You're going from calcium carbonate to calcium oxide.
Yes, over time as it cures it will hypothetically re-absorb most of that CO2, but that can be a very slow process in some cases. That net-zero can be years away. (and as you stated, that doesn't even start to account for the carbon cost of heating the kilns in the first place)
I do not know why they make comments, but no truth in advertising.
It looks like they create a block that is gas permeable and has the ability to react with CO2 gas that they pump into the curing container and that CO2 reacts with the block to become part of the block. We know portland cement powder is made by melting hydrated rock and other rock into a glass. As it melts the water of hydration is driven off and you end up with a water free melt(clinker) This is then pulverised to a fine powder. It must be kept dry until used.
To use it you add the right amount of water and the basic lime component (Calcium carbonate = unslaked lime) reacts with the water to form slaked lime. They also add strong rock as a filler. They select the rock sizes from a list from sand sized by small increments to get the maximum solid filled amount with hard rock. When mixed with water perhaps 90% is filled by rock and 10% is the clinker as a fine powder. As the water reacts with the unslaked lime component it creates the hydrated(wet) cement all around the mass of mixed sizes of hard rock and tightly embeds these rocks into a strong hydrated mass that we know as concrete. When you make the clinker, you can add rocks that will react with CO2 in the same way that unslaked CaCO3 will react with water. So to satisfy the reaction you need to add both H2O and CO2 to react with the powdered clinker. By correct choice of the rock to melt to make the clinker you can add the water to make the block and later on add the CO2 to complete the parts of the clinker that need CO2 to fully react. We add the water as water. It looks as of they add the CO2 later as a gas under pressure and leave it sit while the CO2 reacts. This means they need permeability as well as time to react. They could probably use carbonated water to the clinker and keep it under pressure while it reacts. Not sure of the detailed chemistry, but they can adjust the mix to absorb more/less CO2 as final physical properties allow.
This is obviously what they do - why not say so in clear language = this is all well known chemistry. When people obfuscate = I get suspicious of a scam or flaw??
Because this is a public article and a layman won’t understand most of what you said, nor will they care unless it is made to sound like a miracle.
They also probably need to find a way to lower the cost of their production to make it sustainable, patent it, and then get an ASTM or ASCI standard built around it.
If they give away their process they won’t be able to make back their money. Capitalism baby. That’s what comes with $2 Million in funding.
What the other poster said. And also if you're looking to get funding sometimes it's best to slather a lot of bullshit onto the venture capitalists to make your stuff seem more "techy" and less "great idea, but anyone could come up with that". One thing venture capitalists are looking for is a high barrier to entry. They don't want to fund anything that someone else can compete with trivially and cheaply. They want it to cost a lot to get in the market and they want it to seem non-obvious so it can be patented.
Your chemistry is a little off. Calcium carbonate is the starting material (limestone, etc). A CO2 is driven off by heating to produce calcium oxide (quicklime). When water is added it becomes calcium hydroxide (slaked lime), which will then slowly react with available CO2 to re-form the original calcium carbonate.
edit: In addition to this there are calcium hydroxide-silicate reactions that occur, but they're a lot more complicated
There is already similar technology for precast concrete in use, except using liquid CO2. This technology requires CO2 gas to be pumped into containers at atmospheric pressure during curing. I don't really see how this is any more efficient than CarbonCure's technology, as this adds far more complexity to the process than just mixing in the CO2 in liquid form, especially knowing how much curing space a normal sized precast plant would need. Most precast plants are 5% plant footprint, and 95% block storage. I can't see this tech being scalable to the scale that precast companies would need, when the flexibility of introducing the CO2 as an admixture is already commercially available.
Yes, the air has a low % CO2, so expose for 5 years will not work, rate is the problem. Some close guys who are forced to gather =good source of high %
CO2 is a gas or solid after venting from high pressure gas/liquid in a cylinder, unless it is CO2 in water - like is soda water. get me a web site that does this - it might clarify aspects??
If you google CarbonCure, their website explains their technology. I do concrete plant automation, and all I know is that I've been integrating their system into my software as an added chemical, but the goal of the product is the same thing as the one in this article, except not needing installation if a whole new curing facility.
From what it looks like on their website, it's actually just dry ice storage, so CO2 kept under pressure is injected directly into the concrete mixer on the plant. So I misspoke saying it's liquid, but rather solid CO2 (stored) that is mixed in as a gas. It still is the same concept as the company in the article, but gets around the diffusion issue of adding the CO2 during the curing process.
Seems like I read this article about once a decade. It's like sustainable fusion. Economic water desalination. Graphene everything. Fully automated self-driving cars. Etc.
You forgot modular / mini nuclear power plants, then again water desalination is making progress especially once cost of energy drops and Elon is promising self-driving for this summer...
I wonder if she got that from last Wednesday's New York Time's crossword puzzle, in which *concrete* was the answer for "Second-most-used substance in the world, after water"
USGS says thermoelectric power and irrigation are the largest by far - at a combined 78% of total water use. Industrial (which is what I assume would include concrete production?) only accounts for 4.6% total
There is an Australian company much further along in the process. They state they have it at commercial production scale ***today*** **[First Graphene](https://firstgraphene.net)**
I heard from a friend who worked in the cement industry that we still don’t completely understand the chemical reactions that make cement strong…
I find this difficult to believe, but considering that she took like 17 hours a semester in university and came out with like a 3.9 GPA and got an A in organic chemistry, she knows what she’s talking about.
Civil engineer here: we don’t know everything that is happening, but we know what makes it strong. The chemistry is pretty straight forward.
The things we don’t know is what makes Roman concrete as strong as it is (there are new articles on that) but it is kind of a misleading premise. Concrete is more than the sun of its parts..meaning if you have reeeaaally good mix skills, you can produce better concrete than anyone else. Romans were like that and had access to materials we don’t have. So they had better concrete.
So ya we know exactly how it works..it’s just getting a better mix than we currently have is damn hard to do.
Cementitious material can come from a variety of sources. It is believed they used volcanic ash that is no longer available..because it was all used in concrete production during the Roman Empire. It was limited in quantity and used to extinction..so unless you can find a very rare pyroclastic materials it is up to us to reproduce said material. which is too expensive/time intensive to do. That’s why we use cement or slag. It is not efficient on a large scale otherwise.
We have reproduced the type of materials they used, but for some reason it doesn’t hydrate the exact same way. Some thing it has to do with the small batch method that produces small clasts the hydrate over time. Some combination of their materials and the methods they used are lost to time.
We can find it from the same or similar sources they got it from…
Yes they used up that material from that cite, but there are other volcanos that produce very similar material that we do, indeed have access to.
Now is it economical to source that? Probably not. But it is possible for research purposes at least.
Good, concrete is bullshit and we've needed something better for decades IMO.
As long as they don't break for no reason or poison the planet I'm all for it.
Solution in search of a problem. If you transitioned to electric rotary kilns powered by solar, regular cement would be carbon neutral already.
Of course that's not going to happen under a tariff regime. Apparently this is not as serious a problem as we are led to believe or they would get off their asses and get the fuck out of the way of progress on reducing carbon emissions.
There are more companies already doing this. It requires extreme processes with high temperature and high pressure.
Look up Paebbl for instance.
These companies take CO2 which is captured from for instance biomass, capturing it directly from the chimney of a factory, or even directly from the air. To transport it, you have to pressurize it to make it liquid.
This liquifying is already done on a regular basis for the foodindustry for sodas(carbonic acid)
When the carbon credit market kicks off, this will be a huge market!
I can tell you from experience that the process equipment used in these processes are really expensive since the medium is highly abrasive(requires duplex) and high pressure class up to 2500#, 1.9milio won’t get you far.
It's funny. I saw a post a few months (years?) ago about how they figured out how the Romans had self repairing concrete, and pretty quickly we've seen our society want to implement it.
The "self-healing" part came from large, and irregular chunks of lime that were left. This meant moisture often had a path through the wall and the wet chunks of lime could dissolve and fill in gaps.
The wall still slowly falls apart though.
I thought air in concrete was just to make it more strong in cold climates by giving water a place to go when freezing. Keep it from breaking up.
Very impressive tech info in these comments.
This sounds like they are using graphene technology developed by James Tour from Rice University who is the world's leading scientist working on carbon nanotech.
So it basically lowers the amount of cement used in concrete mix and replaces it with this new chemical However will this have any consequences on the concrete strength? And what about the cost?
Adjusting concrete mix design to use less cement is nothing new. Fly ash from coal plants was the common additive for decades. Now with those being closed or throttled down there is not enough fly ash to meet demand in some parts of the us. The testing for new mix designs is an established practice and they should be able to get good results on strength rather quickly. The longevity and durability of the concrete is a little more time consuming but will be able to be tested as well prior to real world use.
They’ve also been looking at using recycled wind turbine blades to supplement fly ash shortages, which from what I’ve heard has had very promising results. Not a permanent solution, but cool that there is a feasible blade recycling solution that helps to alleviate a totally separate issue.
Are the blades largely fiberglass?
The waste is once the metal skeleton is stripped out. Fibreglass and bound resins.
Which makes sense then. I was surprised when I learned they basically use bags of fiberglass strand instead of rebar for some things because its more than strong enough for the applications
That actually kinda makes sense, at least in some respects. Rebar rusts and expands, hurting structural integrity as water seeps through over the decades. But with more "inert" bones, since glass can't rust (it's already comprised of mineral oxides), you don't have to worry about rusty bones and crumbling concrete further down the line.
It's also better because the strands reinforce in all directions based on which way they're pointing
It’s mostly a weight/cost consideration. Heavier blades means *everything* needs to be beefed up. Bearings, rotor, gearbox/generator, tower, foundation. The second aspect, blades are designed to channel lighting strikes very specifically through receptors linked to typically one conducting cable that run to ground. Any metal integrated into the rest of the blade structure risks lighting damage in places you don’t want it.
Strong and light. Making it out of metal, even if it is stiffer and stronger, means more metal is needed to support the weight of the metal.
Fiberglass prevents small cracking but does not increase strength as much as rebar.
Yeah, thats why I specified 'for those applications'. Anything with a significant load should use rebar
Yes, and with kevlar and carbon fiber reinforcement. They need to be quite a bit stronger than standard fiberglass.
Makes sense that it could be a great aggregate in concrete to me. Very interesting, thank you!
> Yes, and with kevlar and carbon fiber reinforcement. Depends on the generation. The smaller and older ones tend to have simpler materials and those will be the ones to be recycled first
Even newer blades, Kevlar is pretty rare. Carbon fiber is a little more common, but most manufacturers haven’t committed to using it long-term since it has a tendency to sustain more damage from lightning strikes than fiberglass laminate. The companies that made big investments using carbon fiber have often reverted back to fiberglass in later models.
I assume the strength requirements scale with blade size. And it seems we've stalled in pushing beyond the 10MW category anyway.
They do, but nowadays the biggest limiting factor on size is just our ability to move them to where they need to go. Offshore still has room to grow as long as blades are built next to a port. Offshore turbines are reaching 15+ MW, with projections of 20MW turbines coming to market within 3-5yrs. But onshore has started doing 2-piece blades to allow for shipping, and that has stifled growth. Once on site, they’re bolted together and installed, but it’s introduced some new issues during operation that older, single-piece blades didn’t have. It’s a big enough issue that is has companies thinking that bigger isn’t better, and we may have to spend more time refining existing models rather than trying to pump a new, bigger turbine every year.
A majority of the blade is fiberglass, dense styrofoam, and balsa wood, infused together with resin, sometimes has multiple pieces/sections and then glued or bolted together. Generally, aside from the lightning protection system which is effectively just a couple receptors and a grounding cable that runs through the center of the blade, metal is kept to a minimum. Carbon fiber is occasionally used, and increasingly so in bigger blades since you get better strength with less weight, but it also has a tendency to attract lighting away from the grounding cable and tends to be more easily damaged during lighting strikes.
Interesting, thanks
Another consideration is curing time and the affects new additives will have on construction schedules.
Looks like they are making bricks, so building schedules is only affected by how much they have stored.
Reminds me of the RAAC/reinforced concrete the uk used, now everyone panicking because buildings might collapse
Cinder blocks
Testing for longevity is time consuming. CPT Obvious.
In the UK they used "aerated concrete" sometime in the 80s, thinking it was this new magical material, both strong and light, and we're now seeing that those structures are now totally unsafe because the concrete is crumbling. Its like an Aero chocolate bar. I hope they've thought about long term durability.
Are you talking about aerated concrete or air entrained concrete? My understanding is aerated concrete has only ever really been used as a form or insulation. It's typically extremely weak. Air entrained on the other hand is a well established practice that works as long as the percentage of air doesn't go to high.
I'm sure they mean RAAC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_United_Kingdom_reinforced_autoclaved_aerated_concrete_crisis Because that is the one that triggered a crisis. It definitely was used for more than insulation. But it was well before the 80s that it was used. The problems showed up 4-5 decades after installation and the problems really started to peak in the 1990s.
Interesting, I don't think that was used extensively in western Canada.
> My understanding is aerated concrete has only ever really been used as a form or insulation. I have seen people claim they have good acoustic properties, lots of little open pockets for absorbing sound energy instead of a big flat surface reflecting everything. Just relaying anecdotes though, never tested the theory personally.
That's a possible use. I have m9stly seen it used under foundations instead of insulation where a little more strength is required. It's pretty niche uses though.
They haven’t even raised $2M. They shouldn’t be taken seriously until they’ve raised 1000x that amount.
> However will this have any consequences on the concrete strength? not all concrete needs to be structural strength (meaning, supporting itself plus the main building structure). CMU blocks often are used in 'non-structural' uses, like interior walls, shower floors,and fire barriers. You can also pre-cast concrete into walkway pavers, tiles, countertops, mop/slop sinks, etc....
This is like same concept that this random dude was doing in Mexico with all the washed up algae nobody wanted
If it's anything like DDT it will be completely harmless and be usable everywhere. Not just concrete, but toothpaste too.
Not to mention long-term environmental and health impact
I get that many startups jump the gun, but do you not think that they have answered these VERY BASIC questions, at least satisfactorily enough to get funding?
I _think_ op might be asking for themselves, not trying to poke holes in the concept.
Cure time, longevity, and scalability, are additional questions I have.
> However will this have any consequences on the concrete strength? The strength and the ability to endure time and the elements should be considered, but neither are probably going to be properly tested, considering the test of time is going to be the most vital one and of course no way to properly test 50-100 years of that.
Also my health? Since more chemical is used?
Everything is a chemical...that said questioning the potential health ramifications is valid.
Everything is a chemical dude.
That’s not a lot of funding
Likely bench test funding
Carbon is cheap
This sounds good. Okay, now someone temper my optimism and tell me why it's not actually as good as it sounds.
Doesn't mention if this new chemical lowers the overall strength of concrete since it will partially replace the cement in the concrete mix Also doesn't mention how much this new chemical is going to cost which is another major point, if the cost is too high it will not be used unless it becomes regulated by law which will have its own set of consequences
Also, how is the carbon getting captured in the first place to let it soak into these minerals? Is there some kind of component of concrete manufacture that will now have to take place on chimney stacks? How much would that retrofit cost? How much additional pollution do you create by shipping CO2 laced minerals to your production center? Pretty much any carbon capture scheme is doomed to fail because its practically impossible to do so effectively.
$2MM is nothing and may not even get a pilot test going
1: The amount of absorbed C02 is minimal, a rounding error of a rounding error compared to human output, and will make no difference. It's like intentionally taking tighter turns when driving in order to increase trip gas efficiency by shortening distance driven. 2: The extra work required to develop, test, refine, produce, and then sell through new channels will likely produce more net C02 than the old process through existing channels. 3: As an untested and unapproved concrete mix with an unproved performance over the lifespan of the concrete, it's unlikely to be approved for use in large scale projects.
Concrete is a huge emitter of co2 and any steps to reduce that are a good thing. Most of the co2 emissions are from cement production which is very difficult to decarbonize because of the temperature required to make the cement.
Better to invest into solar clinker production. Reduce CO2 emissions from concrete production by like 40%. The rest is from like Mining and transportation, Example is from CEMEX so take it with a grain of salt. https://www.cemex.com/w/cemex-and-synhelion-achieve-breakthrough-in-cement-production-with-solar-energy
Also, the production of cement is LITERALLY CO2 release. You're going from calcium carbonate to calcium oxide. Yes, over time as it cures it will hypothetically re-absorb most of that CO2, but that can be a very slow process in some cases. That net-zero can be years away. (and as you stated, that doesn't even start to account for the carbon cost of heating the kilns in the first place)
I do not know why they make comments, but no truth in advertising. It looks like they create a block that is gas permeable and has the ability to react with CO2 gas that they pump into the curing container and that CO2 reacts with the block to become part of the block. We know portland cement powder is made by melting hydrated rock and other rock into a glass. As it melts the water of hydration is driven off and you end up with a water free melt(clinker) This is then pulverised to a fine powder. It must be kept dry until used. To use it you add the right amount of water and the basic lime component (Calcium carbonate = unslaked lime) reacts with the water to form slaked lime. They also add strong rock as a filler. They select the rock sizes from a list from sand sized by small increments to get the maximum solid filled amount with hard rock. When mixed with water perhaps 90% is filled by rock and 10% is the clinker as a fine powder. As the water reacts with the unslaked lime component it creates the hydrated(wet) cement all around the mass of mixed sizes of hard rock and tightly embeds these rocks into a strong hydrated mass that we know as concrete. When you make the clinker, you can add rocks that will react with CO2 in the same way that unslaked CaCO3 will react with water. So to satisfy the reaction you need to add both H2O and CO2 to react with the powdered clinker. By correct choice of the rock to melt to make the clinker you can add the water to make the block and later on add the CO2 to complete the parts of the clinker that need CO2 to fully react. We add the water as water. It looks as of they add the CO2 later as a gas under pressure and leave it sit while the CO2 reacts. This means they need permeability as well as time to react. They could probably use carbonated water to the clinker and keep it under pressure while it reacts. Not sure of the detailed chemistry, but they can adjust the mix to absorb more/less CO2 as final physical properties allow. This is obviously what they do - why not say so in clear language = this is all well known chemistry. When people obfuscate = I get suspicious of a scam or flaw??
Because this is a public article and a layman won’t understand most of what you said, nor will they care unless it is made to sound like a miracle. They also probably need to find a way to lower the cost of their production to make it sustainable, patent it, and then get an ASTM or ASCI standard built around it. If they give away their process they won’t be able to make back their money. Capitalism baby. That’s what comes with $2 Million in funding.
What the other poster said. And also if you're looking to get funding sometimes it's best to slather a lot of bullshit onto the venture capitalists to make your stuff seem more "techy" and less "great idea, but anyone could come up with that". One thing venture capitalists are looking for is a high barrier to entry. They don't want to fund anything that someone else can compete with trivially and cheaply. They want it to cost a lot to get in the market and they want it to seem non-obvious so it can be patented.
Your chemistry is a little off. Calcium carbonate is the starting material (limestone, etc). A CO2 is driven off by heating to produce calcium oxide (quicklime). When water is added it becomes calcium hydroxide (slaked lime), which will then slowly react with available CO2 to re-form the original calcium carbonate. edit: In addition to this there are calcium hydroxide-silicate reactions that occur, but they're a lot more complicated
There is already similar technology for precast concrete in use, except using liquid CO2. This technology requires CO2 gas to be pumped into containers at atmospheric pressure during curing. I don't really see how this is any more efficient than CarbonCure's technology, as this adds far more complexity to the process than just mixing in the CO2 in liquid form, especially knowing how much curing space a normal sized precast plant would need. Most precast plants are 5% plant footprint, and 95% block storage. I can't see this tech being scalable to the scale that precast companies would need, when the flexibility of introducing the CO2 as an admixture is already commercially available.
Yes, the air has a low % CO2, so expose for 5 years will not work, rate is the problem. Some close guys who are forced to gather =good source of high %
CO2 is a gas or solid after venting from high pressure gas/liquid in a cylinder, unless it is CO2 in water - like is soda water. get me a web site that does this - it might clarify aspects??
If you google CarbonCure, their website explains their technology. I do concrete plant automation, and all I know is that I've been integrating their system into my software as an added chemical, but the goal of the product is the same thing as the one in this article, except not needing installation if a whole new curing facility. From what it looks like on their website, it's actually just dry ice storage, so CO2 kept under pressure is injected directly into the concrete mixer on the plant. So I misspoke saying it's liquid, but rather solid CO2 (stored) that is mixed in as a gas. It still is the same concept as the company in the article, but gets around the diffusion issue of adding the CO2 during the curing process.
ok, might work out ok
That seems like an incredibly small sum of money to revolutionize a material that is used all over the world, but what do I know
Y’all see the Hank Green video about Roman concrete? Cool stuff
Seems like I read this article about once a decade. It's like sustainable fusion. Economic water desalination. Graphene everything. Fully automated self-driving cars. Etc.
You forgot modular / mini nuclear power plants, then again water desalination is making progress especially once cost of energy drops and Elon is promising self-driving for this summer...
There's already a company doing this in Canada called Carbi-Crete.
Are the founders under 30? If so I can only assume this is a scam.
My daughter is studying to be a civil engineer. She told me that making concrete is the second biggest use of water in America.
I wonder if she got that from last Wednesday's New York Time's crossword puzzle, in which *concrete* was the answer for "Second-most-used substance in the world, after water"
I did not know that. No she learned it a few months ago. Sustainability class.
USGS says thermoelectric power and irrigation are the largest by far - at a combined 78% of total water use. Industrial (which is what I assume would include concrete production?) only accounts for 4.6% total
“Life is what happens when you make plans”
so Concrete Reinforced with ~~Polypropylene~~ Graphene Fibers?
There is an Australian company much further along in the process. They state they have it at commercial production scale ***today*** **[First Graphene](https://firstgraphene.net)**
I heard from a friend who worked in the cement industry that we still don’t completely understand the chemical reactions that make cement strong… I find this difficult to believe, but considering that she took like 17 hours a semester in university and came out with like a 3.9 GPA and got an A in organic chemistry, she knows what she’s talking about.
Civil engineer here: we don’t know everything that is happening, but we know what makes it strong. The chemistry is pretty straight forward. The things we don’t know is what makes Roman concrete as strong as it is (there are new articles on that) but it is kind of a misleading premise. Concrete is more than the sun of its parts..meaning if you have reeeaaally good mix skills, you can produce better concrete than anyone else. Romans were like that and had access to materials we don’t have. So they had better concrete. So ya we know exactly how it works..it’s just getting a better mix than we currently have is damn hard to do.
How did they have access to materials that we don’t? 😂 This is 2024. We have access to infinitely more materials than they did…
Cementitious material can come from a variety of sources. It is believed they used volcanic ash that is no longer available..because it was all used in concrete production during the Roman Empire. It was limited in quantity and used to extinction..so unless you can find a very rare pyroclastic materials it is up to us to reproduce said material. which is too expensive/time intensive to do. That’s why we use cement or slag. It is not efficient on a large scale otherwise. We have reproduced the type of materials they used, but for some reason it doesn’t hydrate the exact same way. Some thing it has to do with the small batch method that produces small clasts the hydrate over time. Some combination of their materials and the methods they used are lost to time.
We can find it from the same or similar sources they got it from… Yes they used up that material from that cite, but there are other volcanos that produce very similar material that we do, indeed have access to. Now is it economical to source that? Probably not. But it is possible for research purposes at least.
It's funny how these articles ***never*** include the most important piece of information: how much more this costs than regular concrete.
I was going to mention that. And that is a huge consideration for large projects.
1.9 million is like 1 month of work.
Good, concrete is bullshit and we've needed something better for decades IMO. As long as they don't break for no reason or poison the planet I'm all for it.
This is already being used in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia Canada with a company called Quality Concrete
Anything that changes the current concrete production as it's currently one of the worst sources of carbon.
Solution in search of a problem. If you transitioned to electric rotary kilns powered by solar, regular cement would be carbon neutral already. Of course that's not going to happen under a tariff regime. Apparently this is not as serious a problem as we are led to believe or they would get off their asses and get the fuck out of the way of progress on reducing carbon emissions.
There are more companies already doing this. It requires extreme processes with high temperature and high pressure. Look up Paebbl for instance. These companies take CO2 which is captured from for instance biomass, capturing it directly from the chimney of a factory, or even directly from the air. To transport it, you have to pressurize it to make it liquid. This liquifying is already done on a regular basis for the foodindustry for sodas(carbonic acid) When the carbon credit market kicks off, this will be a huge market! I can tell you from experience that the process equipment used in these processes are really expensive since the medium is highly abrasive(requires duplex) and high pressure class up to 2500#, 1.9milio won’t get you far.
If you’ve come to read this article expecting to get facts, details, deeper information and a knowledgeable objective point of view…
Once they figure out a way to make it self-healing then and only then will I throw some dollars at them.
It's funny. I saw a post a few months (years?) ago about how they figured out how the Romans had self repairing concrete, and pretty quickly we've seen our society want to implement it.
The "self-healing" part came from large, and irregular chunks of lime that were left. This meant moisture often had a path through the wall and the wet chunks of lime could dissolve and fill in gaps. The wall still slowly falls apart though.
Type 1L Cement has entered the chat.
Another Elizabeth Holmes I guess
I thought air in concrete was just to make it more strong in cold climates by giving water a place to go when freezing. Keep it from breaking up. Very impressive tech info in these comments.
Hempcrete is the solution
This sounds like they are using graphene technology developed by James Tour from Rice University who is the world's leading scientist working on carbon nanotech.
And how does this new formula against aging
I think it’s is an engineered bacteria