Super Concrete Is Super Eco-friendly

There are a lot of good things to say about concrete as a building material. We use so much of it that it is "the most prevalent building material on the planet," according to Jeff Salton writing on the tech blog gizmag.com.

But that prevalence comes at a cost. Manufacturing concrete is very energy intensive, and, worldwide, the production of Portland cement, the main binding ingredient in concrete, produces about "5-8 percent of all human-generated atmospheric CO2," Salton writes.

In a truly major advance in green building products, researchers at Louisiana Tech, lead by Erez Allouche, assistant professor of civil engineering and associate director of the Trenchless Technology Center, have developed an "inorganic polymer concrete [that] fits into an emerging class of cementitious materials that utilize 'fly ash,' one of the most abundant industrial by-products on earth, as a substitute for Portland cement."

Allouche's geopolymer concrete offers many improvements on Portland cement. It's much less energy intensive to make. It also can "produce a more durable infrastructure capable of lasting hundreds of years, instead of tens." According to Salton, "by utilizing the fly ash, geopolymer can conserve hundreds of thousands of acres currently used for disposal of coal combustion products, and protect our water ways from fly ash 'contamination,' too."

Along with a number of technical improvements -- including better resistance to corrosion and fire -- "the geopolymer concrete's greatest appeal could like [sic] in its life cycle greenhouse gas reduction potential; as much as 90 percent" compared to typical Portland cement manufacture.

Louisiana Tech is preparing to spin off a company to license out the geopolymer, and it will feature the concrete at its Energy Systems Conference in Shreveport, which opens on November 5.

Photo courtesy of mugley, via Flickr