Word: cementing
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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...
...both environmentally friendly and more effective in fighting corrosion. Dulux Trade, the paint subsidiary of Netherlands-based chemical firm AkzoNobel, this year started selling Ecosure, a type of paint with much reduced amounts of embodied carbon and other volatile organic compounds. And at the R&D center of French cement firm Lafarge, director Pascal Casanova waxes lyrical about Ductal, a super-resilient product the center has developed that he calls the "Formula One" of concrete. It's what architect Ferrier intends to use in his 807-ft. (246 m) Hypergreen tower, a project that could not be built with regular...
...doing business. It's not a question of environment versus business. It's a business issue, and if companies don't address it, they will have problems with their license to operate and grow." His business council has been working with most of the leading players in the cement, metals and mining, and electric-utility industries to define specific targets for such things as CO2 emissions and responsible use of fuels and materials that the firms then commit to meet...
...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...