Obviously the concern is about the carbon footprint of concrete. According to a recent report, the annual global usage of concrete is roughly 30 billion tonnes. Going by the current trend, this will rise upwardly for decades to come. Concrete, an aqueous slurry of cement, sand and gravel can be poured and set in any form. Once set, the product has enormous strength, stability and durability with absolutely no maintenance cost. Over centuries concrete has inspired and dared architects and builders to dream big and build big.
Concrete is 10-15% cement, 15-20% water and the rest an aggregate of gravel and sand. To get high quality concrete, water to cement ratio must be kept low without compromising the workability of the mixture. The ingredients are mixed, set and cured at room temperature. Seems like a very benign process. So what exactly is our quarrel with concrete? Well our issue is not with concrete per se but with the cement in the formulation. Cement is made by the calcination limestone with clay at 1450 deg.C. This high temperature is achieved using fossil fuel, usually coal which holds a heavily tarnished environmental record. During the calcination process multiple reactions take place in sequential and parallel fashion. First of all limestone which is calcium carbonate, releases carbon dioxide and becomes calcium oxide and reacts with oxides and silicates of aluminium and iron in the clay. The resultant product is cement, a complex mixture of tricalcium silicate (3CaO · SiO2), dicalcium silicate (2CaO · SiO2), tricalcium aluminate (3CaO · Al2O3), and a tetra-calcium aluminoferrite (4CaO · Al2O3Fe2O3) with small amounts of gypsum (CaSO4 ). This mixture called clinker is enhanced with additives if needed and then pulvarized to yield cement. This is the conventional cement usually referred to as Portland cement.
Thus cement manufacturing is one of the most energy intensive industries. It is one of the highest consumers of fossil fuels. Approximately 3 GJ of thermal energy and 110 kWh of electrical energy are needed to produce 1 tonne of cement. In terms of CO2 emissions too the cement industry tops the list with 600 kilograms of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere for every tonne of cement manufactured . And that indeed is our concern.
We cannot simply wish away the use of fossil fuels and switch to alternate/renewable energy . Simply because the cost factors are not yet favourable. Besides Coal industries are the biggest employment generators. There are enormous hurdles along this path because globally fossil fuels are subsidised at two levels: production level and consumption level both of which keep the cost to the consumer low. A recent report in Nature (ref.2) states that subsidies worth an average of US$555 billion each year were given from 2017 to 2019. The figure dropped $345 billion in 2020 only because of lower fuel consumption and declining fuel prices during the COVID-19 pandemic. But can the subsidies be withdrawn all of a sudden? The answer is No. Among other factors, rising fossil fuel prices will be extremely hard on people in developing and under-developed countries. Political parties and governments may not want to even tilt the applecart. Along with drastic changes in political and societal mindset, cost effective alternate energy sources must be made available. COP26 in Glasgow is debating this aspect and whole world is listening.
Another question pops up here : do we have alternatives for limestone? Perhaps we do. Fly ash, the residue from the coal plants is a possible candidate and so is slag from the iron and steel industry. Fly ash is the fine residue after the combustion of coal while slag is the residue from iron blast furnaces. Both contain oxides of silicon, aluminum, iron and calcium and hence bear an overall chemical resemblance to Portland cement but not in precise composition or structure. Nevertheless studies have shown that blending conventional cement with 20% of either fly ash or slag doesn't adversely affect the properties of the final concrete. Currently blended cement formulations with varying fly ash/slag content are available in the market. However here is the catch: with a global consensus shaping up to phase out coal by 2070, future availability of fly ash will eventually be an issue. Slag has its own disadvantages regarding workability,permeability and durability which are being looked into.
Tailpiece:
Burj Khalifa : Having consumed 110,000 tonnes of concrete, Burj Khalifa, currently the tallest building on Earth, is guilty of releasing 660,000,00 kilograms of carbon dioxide into our atmosphere. The environmental cost factor of a total of 55,000 tonnes of steel and 103,000 square metres of glass remains to be calculated.
References:
1. Concrete needs to lose its colossal carbon footprint: Nature,30 Sept.2021
2. Why fossil fuel subsidies are so hard to kill?
3. Zimmer, M., Kuhanathan, A. & Badre, A. Abolishing Fuel Subsidies in a Green and Just Transition (Allianz, 2021).
4. Agenda for CoP26: Why phasing out coal will not be decided in a jiffy?
4.Optimizing-the-use-of-fly-ash-concrete.pdf
5. Sag Cement Organisation
6. Sustainable cement: the simple switch that could massively cut global carbon emissions
7.