Videos, Webinars & More

Concrete is the world's most widely used construction material due to its versatility, resilience and low cost. The scale of concrete production means that even modest improvements to the sustainability of concrete have the potential to provide significant environmental impacts. A more sustainable concrete mix can be made by considering all of the components (binders, aggregates, water and admixtures) and understanding the ways in which each can contribute to a more sustainable concrete. The attention to concrete sustainability means that known advancements are being widely employed and new approaches are continually being developed.

​

The last couple of decades have been characterized by a global awareness on rising greenhouse gas emissions, with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change calling for 50-85% reductions in these emissions by 2050 to prevent threatening climate changes. The building and construction industries have been among the leading consumers of material by mass for almost 100 years, with approximately 5% of all anthropogenic global CO2 emissions being originated from Portland cement manufacture. With global population growth and rapid development of third world countries, it is very unlikely that advancements in the process efficiency of material manufacture will occur fast enough to meet emission reduction needs. Thus, new metrics that account for material performance and environmental impact concurrently during design and material selection stages is of great importance and represents a great opportunity for game-changing methods to reduce emissions. This study presents an innovative approach to design and characterize concrete materials with strengths up to UHPC levels, using a framework that allows one to efficiently design concrete mixtures considering multi-objective performance levels. A strategic framework of experimental data collection is coupled with machine learning models to generate performance and emission density diagrams (PDDs and EDDs, respectively). These diagrams intend to provide a flexible tool to evaluate performance, durability, and environmental impacts concurrently, without adding exhausting experimental campaigns. Addressing this issue is critical for public education and industry engagement on next-gen concrete materials such as UHPC, considering the very high cement content often required to achieve the outstanding properties of this material.

This presentation will highlight the convergence of sustainability and durability in concrete to achieve structures that will last longer and have a reduced carbon footprint. Recent changes in the availability and characteristics of cementitious material have sparked the need for new ways to use of industrial by-products, new technologies to mitigate the carbon footprint, construction material recycling, and challenging service life expectations in aggressive environments. Attendees will have guidance toward identifying the most important parameters in selecting materials for achieving sustainable and durable concrete mixtures for construction.

A unique and innovative approach to reach carbon neutrality using the entire value chain of cement and concrete and incorporating that value chain within the circular economy.

Concrete, the most used material on earth after water, contributes a great deal to the environment and the atmosphere. Concrete’s main ingredients are cement, sand and coarse aggregates. Cement alone is responsible for emitting a considerable amount of CO2, a total of 8% of the sum of the global greenhouse gas emissions. Sand and c oarse aggregate are also using up the topsoil and need to be conserved being mother earth’s valuable resources. Replacing any of the ingredients with recycled waste material reduces the carbon footprint of a virgin concrete mix. Coal fly ash is such a material that is used in concrete as a supplementary cementitious material (SCM) for making concrete greener and more economic. However, coal industries being shut down for its pollution effect poses a new challenge in finding this most popular SCM in near future. Fly ash obtained from wood and lumber industries has a great potential for being a substitute for coal fly ash. The main challenge in using wood fly ash lies in the inconsistency of its properties for seasonal and source variations. Along with wood fly ash, wood bottom ash is a good option for being used as a replacement for sand. In this study, an experimental program was carried out to observe the fresh and mechanical properties of mortar and concrete using different percentages of wood fly ash and bottom ash as cement and sand replacement respectively. It was concluded that incorporating wood bottom ash did not have a significant effect on the properties of concrete, but a 30% replacement of cement with wood fly ash provided concrete with comparable compressive and tensile strength.