News Detail

Concrete Sustainability: Where We Are Now and Where Are We Going?

10/18/2017

The 10th Anniversary Sustainability Forum recently took place at The Concrete Convention and Exposition in Anaheim, CA, USA. The forum was sponsored by ACI Committees 130, Sustainability, 201, Durability, 236, Material Science of Concrete, and 349, Concrete Nuclear Structures.

There have been great advancements in concrete sustainability technologies and systems in the last decade. To celebrate the 10th Anniversary ACI Concrete Sustainability Forum, Khaled Awad, ACI President, and Hugo Corres Peiretti, President of fib, provided insight for the future. Essential accomplishments over the last decade were provided, allowing participants to understand what’s going on in concrete sustainability. The latest technological “challenges” and the future of concrete sustainability for the next decade and beyond were discussed.

“It’s very interesting to see how simple ideas are difficult to push when it comes to sustainability,” stated Peiretti. “It is clear that sustainability is a simple concept with a complex equation. I see sustainability as a cultural problem and we must work on educating younger generations across the world to make sustainability a part of all cultures.”

Petr Hajek, of Czech Technical University in Prague, told attendees that, “In my view, sustainability is about the survival of humans on earth. Climate changes, depletion of natural resources, socio-economic problems and environment quality changes all play a role in the quality of life on earth. Sustainable concrete is a resource that can combat these issues.”

In a presentation titled “Global CO2 Sink by Concrete Carbonation,” Fengming Xi, of the Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, advised attendees about the latest research results on this topic.

Calcination of carbonate rocks during the manufacture of cement produced 5% of global CO2 emissions from all industrial process and fossil-fuel combustion in 2013. Considerable attention has been paid to quantifying these industrial process emissions from cement production, but the natural reversal of the process—carbonation—has received little attention in carbon cycle studies.

Using new and existing data on cement materials during cement service life, demolition, and secondary use of concrete waste to estimate regional and global CO2 uptake between 1930 and 2013 using an analytical model describing carbonation chemistry, it was found that carbonation of concrete over their life cycle represents a large and growing net sink of CO2, increasing from 0.10 gigatons of carbon (GtC) per year in 1998 to 0.25 GtC per year in 2013.

It was estimated that a cumulative amount of 4.5 GtC has been sequestered in carbonating concrete from 1930 to 2013, offsetting 43% of the CO2 emissions from production of cement over the same period, not including emissions associated with fossil use during cement production. The conclusion was that carbonation of cement products represents a substantial carbon sink that is not currently considered in emissions inventories.

Other forum presentations included:

fib President Perspectives
ACI 130, Sustainability of Concrete (Guidelines)
fib Commission 7 (Sustainability)
ISO/TC71/SC8, ISO Environmental Standards for Concrete Sector
"Revolutionary” Systems for the Construction of Long-Life Infrastructures
Does Fiber Reinforcement Enhance Concrete Sustainability?

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