KANTERS
Bart Kanters, President-Concrete Ontario, wrote a composition titled “Moving to a Low-Carbon Concrete Footprint” continues with “Concrete for Every Application” for Issue 6 / September 2021 Concrete Ontario “Stay Connected” Magazine. It is a written excerpt filled with thought-provoking analysis of concrete and its valuable contribution to our world. He begins by touting the amazing qualities of concrete and ends with thought-provoking questions, advice to ask people, finally “what can each person in the industry do to increase concrete strength for lower carbon footprint?” and carry the sustainability into the future! Please read below and use the link to go to, and to read the article in the Concrete Ontario Magazine-pages 6-17.“
There are many amazing things about concrete, and it isn’t a surprise to anyone who works in the construction industry that this product is the most used construction material in the world. However, carbon reduction is becoming one of the most important topics that the industry is addressing with both Owners and Designers. When you step back and look at what concrete has to offer to every sector o four country’s critical infrastructure, things like strength, durability and resilience always come to mind. But we are now extremely excited to see the discussions recently focusing on sustainability and carbon reductions moving to the forefront in our discussions with both designers and contractors alike. One of the key reasons concrete is required for practically every major type of construction is its unique properties.
CONCRETE…
• Uses local materials and local labour to create a plastic product that can be shaped and moulded into absolutely any size and form that you can imagine.
• Allows the material, via a chemical reaction cementing materials, admixtures, and water to form a strong and durable structural material right in front of your eyes in a matter of hours and days.
• Is the material that forms the backbone of our modern world
• Has so dramatically raided the quality of our lives that it is hard to realize how much this material impacts every part of our local communities.
• Can be designed to provide the performance that a contractor needs to effectively transport, place, finish while it is still flowable in the first few hours of the product’s life.
• At the same time, develops the long-term hardening properties that our society needs to create infrastructure and can last hundreds of years!To create an even stronger product, the concrete industry is pleased to see stakeholders challenging us to address global warming challenges. There is a need for all of us to look at the steps we take today to deliver low carbon solutions to reduce our carbon footprint. We are also excited to imagine and develop new and innovative materials and methods to achieve the cement and concrete industry goal of net-zero carbon by 2050. As part of that process, our first step as a highly technical industry is to embrace accounting systems such as Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs). Since we all realize that to reduce our carbon footprint, we first must know what our carbon intensity is. Then, we can actively work towards using systems and materials to reduce that intensity, while still provide the durability that concrete is synonymous with. Over the past 2 years, the Canadian Ready Mixed Concrete Association of Canada (CRMCAC) has been working closely with the National Research Council to address the needs of both designer and contractors when it comes to ready mixed concrete EPDs. To accurately estimate the products carbon intensity, work is underway to create seven regional industry average EPDs for concrete that recognizes the regional weather differences and raw material availability within each region. These regional industries average EPDs will be published early 2022 and will significantly improve everyone’s understanding of our material and allow for more accurate life cycle accounting by everyone on the construction team. While the creating of region specific industry average EPDs along with the expanded development of concrete plant specific EPDs is a critical first step for benchmarking our carbon reduction in the coming years and decades.The pressing question is … “So what can I do NOW to specifically reduce the carbon intensity of my concrete?” He starts off with 5:
1— Embrace Performance Specifications
2— Add Carbon Reduction Goals to Your Specifications
3— Allow the Use of Lower Carbon Raw Materials
4— Ensure that You have Excellent Quality Control and Assurance on Your Projects
5— Consider the use of Both Innovative Materials and Evaluation Methods
In the continuing segment titled “A Concrete for Every Application”, Rex Donahey, Director-Concrete Innovation and Editor-in-Chief-Concrete International magazine with the American Concrete Institute (ACI). According to “Report on Application of Nanotechnology and Nanomaterials in Concrete”—the first report by American Concrete Institute (ACI) 241 titled “Nanotechnology of Concrete”: “Nanoparticles have a high surface-area-to-volume ratio, allowing for increased chemical activity during cement hydration”.
TOPICS COVERED:
Specialty Concrete Construction
Sustainable Concrete Construction
Enhancing Concrete’s Best Qualities—Strength, Durability, and Beauty to
Ultra-high-performance Concrete
• Custom Patterend Surfaces-decorative
Concrete Isn’t Perfect—Some innovations designed to enhance some of concrete’s shortcomings
• Self-Healing Concrete-adds bacteria to ‘heal cracks’
• Eco Concrete-reduce greenhouse gases with new binders, competitive new cement, cost-competitive, exceeds durability and strength performance of existing, like fly ash…
• Pervious Concrete-pourous concrete that allows water to flow through
• Bendable Concrete—Fiber-reinforced “bendable concrete”: 40% lighter in weight and 500 times more resistent to cracking…
• Lightweight Concrete—that lasts longer due to internal curing…
• Translucent Concrete—Concrete is composed of layers upon layers of a translucent fabric into fine-grained concrete that allows concrete one can see-through vs. usual opaqueness. Just as strong as traditional concrete because the translucent fibers are small and the ratio of fibers to concrete is low.
For the article titled “Moving to a Low-Carbon Concrete Footprint” and continuing topics, please go to: https://stayconnected.canadianconcreteexpo.com/view/513144264/6/