Tech | September 02, 2010 | 16 comments

The Amazing Science of Turning Carbon Dioxide into Concrete

source: http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/green-technology/news-your-future-paved-carbon-dioxide?...

(Environmental+Graffiti)
Written by jmalin
A new technology exists that can turn CO2 into concrete and it's here now. This green technology solution can eliminate 100% of the CO2 pollution produced by a coal plant and turn it into concrete.

Calera, a California start up, is one of the few companies at the forefront of this new green solution. The process, in a nutshell, takes the CO2 that would normally be pumped into the air and pumps it into sea water. Through "mineralization via aqueous precipitation", the CO2 is turned into a substance that can replace Portland cement which is the key man made catalytic ingredient used to make concrete. So, instead of coal power plants pumping CO2 pollution into the air, perhaps they can create building materials!

Calera's technology is an example of green tech that can be implemented now to help solve one of man's biggest pollution problems. Coal burning is not going away because it is and will remain one of the primary ways we create energy for decades to come. Solar, wind and ocean power are nice but limited and they will not now and likely will never provide all of our energy needs. We need solutions and this process could be the answer.
http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/green-technology/news-your-future-paved-car...:+environmentalgraffiti+(Environmental+Graffiti)
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16 comments // The Amazing Science of Turning Carbon Dioxide into Concrete

  • AsiaSuperLoop
    • 0
      AsiaSuperLoop  

    • Isn't the financial idea behind green cement that the users of the product will subsidize the additional cost associated with making it? I think you have to be careful about any new technology that purports to make coal fired power generation sustainable and good for us. Maybe green cement is wonderful. However, at the end of the day, the numbers have to make sense, and subsidizing coal probably isn't the right way to go (if that's what's being proposed).

    • 1 year ago
  • treewolf39
  • ezrierin
    • -3
      ezrierin  

    • Here is a thought. Since we are dumping Co2 into the atmosphere, why don’t we build power plants that clean the air? I wonder how small the US carbon footprint would be if we dedicated say 12 nuclear power plants (which we will end up building anyway) to cleaning the air. All we need is energy to re-terraform the earth. Plants do it by using photon energy and Co2. We know the process that can be duplicated mechanically. Did anyone see the terraforming machine in Aliens 2? It is possible. We can turn Co2, a gas, into a solid that can be buried or possibly used for other purposes. I’d pay another 5 cents at the pump to save the planet.

    • 1 year ago
  • ampersand
    • +2
      ampersand  

    • As these folks are in my neighborhood (a hundred miles is considered neighborly here) I've heard about them for some time. The nicest thing about the article is that it may finally prompt me to stop in and try and see a bit of their process and product. Pliny Fisk and others have argued the merits of fly ash concrete for some time. If this is indeed a "green" concrete it would be a wonderful thing.
      The production of standard concrete is far from green.
      Investors seem to like the idea. The company has 2 billion dollars on hand from investors to make this a going concern.

    • 1 year ago
  • treewolf39
  • ampersand
  • toyotabedzrock
  • twohawks
    • 0
      twohawks  
    • toyotabedzrock:

      Thanks, TW.

      Good links, tb,

      Yeah, I did not check the source on those links... that was a perfect prompt remark.

      I did not have time to read the full text of the wiki info you posted, but it gives undoubtable pause about this. Thanks for posting those.

      ACS is supposedly a scientific peer review society, but then I would have no way of assessing political bents of the hosts there.
      I did not have too much time to go back and find more info on what I was looking for when I found that. The thing was, years ago I read about "something new" that could be done/added to concrete during its production for rendering it into more of an aggressive carbon sink... allowing it to effectively scrub the atmosphere within a more "more meaningful time frame" than 100 years.
      It was a science news thing at the time, and then I never heard about it again.

      PCA "Founded in 1916, the Portland Cement Association represents cement companies in the United States and Canada"... I would presume would obviously have more "corporate-based" infrastructure. But they seem to have a ton of good information there.
      Interesting, there was not one word mentioned about ash in their article!

    • 1 year ago
  • twohawks
    • 0
      twohawks  
    • Image

    • Great post.

      I wonder how this relates to the concept of cabonation of concrete to c ause it to be a better c02 attractor/sink?
      http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es903581d

      For those of you interested in this subject, you may also want to check this out..

      CO2 and the Concrete Industry: Cement and Concrete as a Carbon Dioxide Sink
      http://www.cement.org/tech/carbon_sink.asp
      What most people do not realize is that the release of CO2 from calcination in the manufacture of portland cement may also be part of a cyclic process and is partially carbon neutral in smaller timeframes such as decades and may be fully carbon neutral in longer timeframes. It is easy to picture the organic portion of the carbon cycle with respect to plants as previously mentioned; carbon is absorbed through photosynthesis and released through respiration or decomposition. Inorganic forms of solid carbon such as rock are also part of the carbon cycle. Rocks and other minerals are by far the largest sinks of carbon on Earth and they can weather or decompose, either naturally or through anthropogenic processes such as in cement kilns. The carbon dioxide released to the atmosphere is naturally in constant flux with other large sinks, such as the oceans and other surface waters, where it dissolves and through a variety of both organic and inorganic calcareous processes, such as reef formation and precipitation, settles back into the Earth’s crust.

    • 1 year ago
  • treewolf39
  • royulery
    • 0
      royulery  
    • twohawks:

      thanks for the knowledge, i can never get enough. the majority of co2 that has been locked up in rocks has been from reef building bacteria called stromatalites over a billion years ago. there are limestone layers,miles thick from the deposition of caco2 by the reef builders. some of this bacteria still survives, it could be put back to task.

    • 1 year ago
  • littlwarrior
  • jubal
    • +3
      jubal  

    • Three thumbs up....LOL if I only had that many....this is amazing news and I hope this becomes a viable market and technology.

    • 1 year ago
  • kennymotown
  • figgdimension
  • Progresshiv
treewolf39
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