Cement

A six-year competition to capture CO2 emissions from operational power plants and convert them into useful products has drawn to a close, and produced dual winners with technologies that promise to reduce the environmental footprint of concrete.

The cement used to make concrete carries quite a carbon footprint. Now, scientists at the University of Tokyo have created a cement-free alternative that directly bonds sand particles together using a reaction between alcohol and a catalyst.

Pulp mills generate significant amounts of waste, and we're seeing scientists get quite creative with how it might be put to use. The latest example sees it used as a filler material for cement, which proved to be stronger and more resilient.

Unfortunately concrete production is a major source of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Now engineers at Purdue University have developed a new cement recipe that can absorb CO2 twice as fast as usual, hopefully turning it into a useful carbon sink.

Researchers have found that the concrete walls in a decommissioned power plant in Japan have not only kept their strength over the decades but have actually gotten stronger with use, thanks to a rare mineral also found in ancient Roman concrete.

Engineers at Penn State University have developed a new type of flexible cement they say can be used to contain methane leaks, by being fed into the the very fine gaps around deteriorating gas wells that traditional cements are unable to fill.

Scientists in Australia have developed a new cement-free solution they say is better equipped to handle the corrosive nature of sewerage systems, while also helping avoid the buildup of troublesome and costly fatbergs.

A new adaptation of a pre-stressing technique has been used to produce concrete that is lighter but with comparable strength, an advance that if widely applied, could save significant amounts of CO2.

A substance known as calcium phosphate cement is commonly used to repair broken bones, both holding them together and encouraging the growth of new bone tissue. Now, scientists have added carbon fibers to the material to also make it self-healing.

Strong as it is, concrete doesn’t stand up well against bending. Now, researchers at Swinburne University have developed a new type of concrete that can not only bend better, but doesn’t require cement to make, reducing its environmental footprint.

Making cement is one of the biggest contributors of carbon emissions. Now MIT researchers have developed a new method that can clean up the process.

To make concrete more environmentally friendly, the industry has been adding by-products from coal-fired power plants, but doing so had its own problems. Now, Rice researchers have developed a new composite binder that requires no cement, and reduce waste from power plants at the same time.