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As the pressure shifts to the concrete industry to deliver cost-effective, efficient low-carbon solutions, it can feel that the options are limited, the risks are high and the margins tight. However, there are options that can reduce carbon in concrete and cement industry at scale and without excessive cost and demand on limited power sources stretched thin by increased demand from economic growth and the implementation of AI and a multitude of decarbonizing technology solutions. Steve Bryan, Managing Director of Ecocem Americas, and John Reddy, Director of Concrete Technology Deployment at Ecocem, will discuss how Ecocem’s ACT—a next-generation low-carbon cement technology—offers the greatest potential to decarbonize the global cement and concrete industry cost-efficiently and at speed.

Presenters:
Steve Bryan, Managing Director, Ecocem Americas
Bryan joined Ecocem in 2013, bringing with him over 35 years of experience in cement operations, technology, global trading, strategic planning, and business development. He is responsible for Ecocem business development outside of Western Europe.

John Reddy, Director of Concrete Technology Deployment, Ecocem and Vice President, Institute of Concrete Technology
Reddy joined Ecocem in 2004 when the environment was only beginning to become a focus for the construction industry and over the past 20 years has seen the business evolve from a startup to become Europe’s low-carbon cement technology business.

In this webinar, Jake Homiller, CEO of CarbiCrete, walks through the company’s technology, describes how it can easily be implemented at any concrete plant, and explains how the company plans to carry out its mission of being the leading deployed technology to deliver decarbonized concrete products at market scale.

CarbiCrete is a Montreal-based carbon removal technology company whose patented process enables the production of cement-free concrete, avoiding 100% of cement-related emissions by replacing cement with a steelmaking byproduct and removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by mineralizing CO2 into the concrete for permanent storage.

Concrete is the world's most widely used construction material due to its versatility, resilience and low cost. The scale of concrete production means that even modest improvements to the sustainability of concrete have the potential to provide significant environmental impacts. A more sustainable concrete mix can be made by considering all of the components (binders, aggregates, water and admixtures) and understanding the ways in which each can contribute to a more sustainable concrete. The attention to concrete sustainability means that known advancements are being widely employed and new approaches are continually being developed.

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The last couple of decades have been characterized by a global awareness on rising greenhouse gas emissions, with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change calling for 50-85% reductions in these emissions by 2050 to prevent threatening climate changes. The building and construction industries have been among the leading consumers of material by mass for almost 100 years, with approximately 5% of all anthropogenic global CO2 emissions being originated from Portland cement manufacture. With global population growth and rapid development of third world countries, it is very unlikely that advancements in the process efficiency of material manufacture will occur fast enough to meet emission reduction needs. Thus, new metrics that account for material performance and environmental impact concurrently during design and material selection stages is of great importance and represents a great opportunity for game-changing methods to reduce emissions. This study presents an innovative approach to design and characterize concrete materials with strengths up to UHPC levels, using a framework that allows one to efficiently design concrete mixtures considering multi-objective performance levels. A strategic framework of experimental data collection is coupled with machine learning models to generate performance and emission density diagrams (PDDs and EDDs, respectively). These diagrams intend to provide a flexible tool to evaluate performance, durability, and environmental impacts concurrently, without adding exhausting experimental campaigns. Addressing this issue is critical for public education and industry engagement on next-gen concrete materials such as UHPC, considering the very high cement content often required to achieve the outstanding properties of this material.

This presentation will highlight the convergence of sustainability and durability in concrete to achieve structures that will last longer and have a reduced carbon footprint. Recent changes in the availability and characteristics of cementitious material have sparked the need for new ways to use of industrial by-products, new technologies to mitigate the carbon footprint, construction material recycling, and challenging service life expectations in aggressive environments. Attendees will have guidance toward identifying the most important parameters in selecting materials for achieving sustainable and durable concrete mixtures for construction.