The gaining of sand causes vast environmental impacts. In India the depletion through illegal sand exploitation from strands caused protests . Many protesters and a journalist were murdered by the sand mafia. It is not feasible yet to use the sand of deserts like Sahara to make concrete, because the grains are not suitable. Even the arab countries import sand, biggest consumer is China.

Would this new procedure be appropriate to use desert sand? That would be extremly advantagous beyond evoiding carbon-emissions.

Spiero makes a very good point! This is interesting progress to be sure, hopefully it works well...

If this has to be fired, it's not going to be useful for many, many of the applications of regular concrete. (I have visions of controlled torching of entire buildings...)

I like the concept but.... Needed to heat for up to 72 hours? At what temperature? Is that practical for building construction?

I was only waiting before "space" pops up. There it is, the second last word. It felt kind of spacey technology from the get go.

I wonder about how practical, how costly, how affordable this green new way of building is expected to be on day in the spacey foggy after-corona world.

"Squeezing it between their fingers" level of strength and they call it concrete?

To quote: "... its compressive strength doesn’t yet match up to what you’d expect of traditional concrete. The team has so far only tested it by squeezing it between their fingers ..."

Uhh? Why is this even newsworthy? It sounds like kitty litter could give this stuff a run for its money! This reminds me of a scam I heard about around 25 years ago where a guy took loads of investors to the cleaners with a product that he said could be sprayed on the sand flattened out and when it dried you had an instant road. It never got manufactured, but apparently, the dream is still alive.

Cement is made from calcium carbonate, or limestone. Lime stone was made by sea creatures, using CO2. That CO2 came from the atmosphere!
Present amount of atmospheric CO2 is too low! So the more CO2 the better.
If you heat sand, you get glass. Glass blocks are used in building work. Maybe if this process was used to directly bond glass blocks, it might be useful.
As a substitute for cement, doesn't seem likely.

I see the climate change denier worzel is here again, you really need to educate yourself mate, not keep parroting right-wing garbage you hear on fox news or wherever.

But anyway, this material doesn't sound like a goer, the need to fire it in-situ is a show-stopper, and compared to materials like hempcrete and magnesium-based concretes, which are actually easy to mix and lay, and which actually absorb CO2 as they harden, this will never have the practicality required of a concrete alternative. This sounds like another group of scientists trying to justify their research and maintain their funding by sending out press releases.

@Spud Murphy
Of course it comes down what you think is the right level of CO2 in the atmosphere, 100 million odd years ago its was many times higher than today. Changes in CO2 is not going to kill the planet, yes it will make changes to the climate that might not be so good for us and the biological diversity will change to meet the new levels.

Selfishly, I would prefer the levels not to rise further!