Carbon-negative is a long stretch, it’s just using waste material that is usually used as fuel. It’s at best low-carbon compared to concrete, which honestly is already a good thing.
At around the same time, Meyer learned about the large amount of waste lignin that is produced every year, primarily from pulp and paper processes, which is also expected to be produced from biorefineries in the future.
[…] During the production of pulp and paper products, roughly 100 million tons of lignin are produced annually as a waste byproduct and subsequently burned as low-value fuel.
Meyer saw lignin as a polymer that could be used as a material instead of a fuel and sought to crosslink it like an epoxy resin. Using lignin allowed Meyer to sequester CO2 captured from the air in the form of biomass that would otherwise be burned.
(Emphasis mine)
Thanks, headline sounded like bullshit, but this makes sense.
Little steps in the right direction I guess.
Oh yes, if it ends up replacing concrete that would definitely be a win. It never was my intention to dunk on the invention, I just felt that the title was misleading and had an urge to correct it.
Same here. Every bit counts. And the bio polymer idea sounds interesting.
Cement contributes to ~8% of the Earth’s CO2 emissions. Almost 4x aviation, and not too far off all of the Earth’s combined agriculture.
If concrete was a country, it’d be the 3rd highest polluting country on Earth, after China and the US.
Even if this headline is overly ambitious, any improvement is a good one.
Roman concrete would cure by reacting with the carbon dioxide in the air, fixing it into the concrete. It doesn’t sound like that’s how this concrete works, but I wonder if a methodology like that would be carbon negative.
For obvious reasons, I imagine that would only react on the surface level, and I’m willing to bet the CO2 generated in mining the materials, creating the concrete, and transporting the concrete outweigh some surface-level reactions with CO2.
Yeah you need to pour it differently, in thin layers. I’m guessing that extra time might make it too expensive?
Roman methods are not how modern concrete is produced. As the article mentions, concrete production involves heating massive amounts, spewing loads of carbon dioxide & other toxins into the atmosphere.
That’s why I was proposing using the older method that would sequester CO2 instead of emitting it.
I dig it!
Get back to the start with the stuff. Continue to study other ways utilize it in recycling/upcycling, but start with the carbon negative old ways at the core.
Isn’t the formula for Roman concrete unknown? I’m wondering how they can tell it is carbon negative
Isn’t the formula for Roman concrete unknown?
Yes, though a lot of research has been done to figure out its most important properties. A secret of its durability was just figured out last year. https://news.mit.edu/2023/roman-concrete-durability-lime-casts-0106
Interesting, thanks for sharing
The real problem is that we’re still paving over the planet for the sake of car dependency. We don’t need more concrete. We should be tearing it up and banning cars.
Concrete is also used in buildings and other facilities like pumped storage hydropower.
