Word: cementing
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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High-tech concrete is just one of the products that have emerged from the research-and-development labs of cement, steel and chemicals firms this decade, and it signals an increasing commitment by heavy industry to the notion of "sustainability." As public pressure has grown to reduce energy use and carbon emissions--and in general to tread more lightly on the environment--companies in these industries have poured money into R&D efforts. Much of the work has focused on internal processes, especially on the critical task of how to lower emissions during manufacturing. But in their labs, scientists have...
...chemical firm AkzoNobel, this year started selling a new type of paint called Ecosure that sharply reduces the amount of embodied carbon and other so-called volatile organic compounds--and is being heavily marketed as "a new era in sustainability and performance." At the R&D center of French cement giant Lafarge, director Pascal Casanova waxes lyrical about Ductal, a superresilient concrete the center developed that he calls the Formula One of concrete. It's what architect Ferrier used in his 807-ft. (246 m) Hypergreen tower, a project that wouldn't have been possible with regular concrete...
...sense of how technological progress is translating into environmental gains, take a trip to the research campus of Lafarge, just outside the French city of Lyons. The world's largest cement company, with sales of $22.5 billion in 2007, Lafarge has set itself the goal by 2010 of cutting its net CO2 emissions for every ton of cement it produces to 20% below the 1990 level. But it is also steaming ahead with research efforts into smarter, stronger and less polluting products, including ultra-high-performance concrete. Research director Casanova traces the path of innovation back to the 1980s, when...
...sense of how technological progress is translating into environmental gains, take a trip to Lafarge's research campus, just outside the French city of Lyons. The world's largest cement company, Lafarge has set itself a goal: by 2010, it will cut its net CO2 emissions for every ton of cement it produces to 20% below the 1990 level. But it is also steaming ahead with research into smarter, stronger and less polluting products, including ultra-high-performance concrete. Research director Casanova traces the path of innovation back to the 1980s, when the first big gains were made in increasing...
Lafarge is by no means alone in focusing on innovation. Franz-Josef Ulm, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says "there's not one single cement company that isn't looking at ways to improve the resistance of concrete." The next step, he says, "is to achieve materials with higher strength, but which use the same amount of initial material...