Geopolymer Cement for mitigation of Global Warming

Rock-based Geopolymer cements reduce CO₂ emission by 80 %

The technology developed for Rock-based Geopolymer cements reduces CO₂ emission by 80%. Geopolymeric cements are manufactured in a different manner than Portland cement. Geopolymers do not rely on the calcination of calcium carbonate and therefore do not release bounded CO₂. They also do not require extreme high temperature kilns, with large expenditure of fuel, nor do geopolymers require such a large capital investment in plants and equipment. The mechanical properties of these novel geopolymeric cements are similar to those of regular Portland cement. Appropriate geological resources are available on all continents for providing suitable raw materials. The issue of long term durability was studied in relation with archaeological analogues, namely ancient Roman cements. A new linguistic study of the Latin author Vitruvius’ famous book «De Architectura» (1st century B.C.) outlines the unique properties of a “carbunculus” cement, which was manufactured by calcining geological materials (see in Archaeo-Analogues and in the paper #E Searching for Carbunculus ). During cement manufacture, this re-created ancient Roman cement reduces CO₂ emissions by 55-60%.

Introducing low-CO₂ Rock-based Geopolymer cements would, on one hand, allow unlimited development of concrete infrastructures for the Global Economy and, on the other hand, dramatically mitigate CO₂ Greenhouse Gas emissions. The European industrial research consortium GEOCISTEM (European multidisciplinary Brite Euram industrial research project funded by the European Commission) developed Rock-based Geopolymer cements that mitigate CO₂ emissions by 80%. See the results on the page GEOCISTEM.

Successful accomplishment of the GEOCISTEM exemplifies the theoretical studies of the Background knowledge (see the Research Project Global Warming and in the LIBRARY the paper #5 Global Warming ) and demonstrates that it is possible to manufacture new cements with low-CO₂ emission during their fabrication, to minimize the «Green House» Global-Warming. The Table and Figure show interesting data on energy cost and CO₂ emission for Portland cement and for three types of geopolymeric cements developed during the GEOCISTEM project: glass cement and two CARBUNCULUS cements™

Comparison between Energy consumption and CO₂ emission
during manufacture, for various cement types, assuming Portland=100