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NEU: An ACI Center of Excellence for Carbon Neutral Concrete would like to make the Spring 2023 specialty day focused on carbon neutral concrete. This event will have multiple speakers that will be geared toward contractors, engineers, architects, owners/operators, and relevant industry NGO's. Attendees will gain understanding about the innovative materials and technologies that ACI is advancing through its committee and center work that can be used to create more carbon neutral concrete. It is the goal of the NEU Carbon Neutral Concrete Specialty Day to reach both domestic and international audiences to discuss the themes of more sustainable and low carbon concrete practices, materials, and technologies.

This presentation will demonstrate how construction productivity and sustainability could be improved using a Systems approach. Also, it will introduce a range of research and innovation in construction materials and technologies which could improve construction productivity and carbon footprint.

This talk will discuss the demand for low-carbon cement and concrete by architects and owners to achieve more sustainable structures. Also addressed will be current and proposed legislative and executive measures that would require lower carbon materials for public and private projects.

Some CO2 emissions during cement production process are inevitable and cannot be eliminated using established techniques of clinker substitution and alternative fuels. Therefore, new approaches are needed to deal with this CO2 in order to reach our vision of carbon-neutral concrete. Carbon capture technologies provide a solution to ultimately reduce hard-to abate emissions.

To reach the crucial milestone of generating efficient decarbonization pathways in sustainable concrete constructions, new technological developments to increase carbon sequestration in concrete are needed, well beyond the current carbon mitigation approaches limited to cement manufacturing. The objective of this presentation is to design sustainable and eco-friendly concrete by replacing cement with carbon-based agricultural byproducts and reinforcing it with graphene-based nanomaterials. This is a promising way for developing eco-efficient and highly resilient concrete, with at least 2x increased tensile load carrying and strain energy absorption capability; and 2-3x higher CO2 sequestration ability. The output of the proposed study will help promoting low-cost pathways for nullifying the greenhouse gas emission in the concrete and construction industry, while optimizing concrete’s carbon uptake and mineralization capacity, by engineering the nanostructured interfaces to accelerate carbonation kinetics.

This presentation will discuss experiences with high SCM (low carbon) concrete mix designs and a discussion of items for consideration for all project team members when these mixes are specified and used.