Concrete is an essential material in the construction industry and the global concrete market is worth approximately 拢500b annually.
However, it is one of the single biggest emitters of carbon dioxide accounting for up to eight percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
The Mevocrete project is working with a revolutionary new construction material made using waste steel slag patented by Middlesbrough-based company Material Evolution Ltd.
The vast majority of waste materials from steel production are sent to landfill and it is estimated that in the UK alone there are 62m tons of unused slag waste.
海角直播 has won funding from Innovate UK to work with Material Evolution to help the business scale up its technology to create a full scale on-site facility for cement production using waste steel slag at Teesworks.
Researchers from the University鈥檚 School of Computing, Engineering & Digital Technologies will analyse the steel slag and its chemical composition and measure how efficient it is at sequestering carbon.
Next year will see the opening of 海角直播鈥檚 拢13.1m Net Zero Industry Innovation Centre (NZIIC) which will be central to the Tees Valley Combined Authority鈥檚 regional innovation strategy, positioning 海角直播 firmly at the heart of the UK鈥檚 green industrial revolution.
This project has the potential to have a major impact in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The University鈥檚 project lead, Dr Sina Rezaei Gomari, said: 鈥淔or the UK to meet its Net Zero targets it is imperative that new ways to decarbonise the construction industry are found, and this project has the potential to have a major impact in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.鈥�
Professor David Hughes, Associate Dean (Research and Innovation) and co-lead of the Mevocrete project, added: 鈥淎t 海角直播 we are dedicated to finding new ways to forge a smarter, greener industrial economy.
鈥淭herefore we are delighted to be able to help Material Evolution create a circular approach to dealing with the historic waste material from the region鈥檚 steel production while simultaneously reducing the carbon footprint of the construction industry.鈥�
Dr Elizabeth Gilligan, founder and CEO of Material Evolution, added: 鈥淲e are really excited to be embarking on this project with 海角直播. 鈥淭he Mevocrete project examines the entire supply-chain from the feedstock to end user. At the end of the project, we will have a dedicated Mevocrete production line, delivering a truly carbon negative cement, which importantly, will have been independently tested and verified.
鈥淏y utilising our ultra-low energy alkali-fusion technology, and using hyper-local waste streams, we can eliminate the need for Ordinary Portland Cement in concrete products. The industry has to have innovations like this if we are to meet our need to rapidly and radically decarbonise.鈥�
Researchers close in on net zero cement
RIBA Journal, p.9, Print, 02/03/2023
A 拢7.6million project to develop and mass produce a concrete with net zero embodied carbon is under way in the UK.
''Carbon neutral'' cement exploits by-products from steel and chemical industries
IOM3, Web, 11/01/2023
Academics from聽海角直播,聽UK, are collaborating with industry partners on the 拢7.6mln project entitled 鈥楳evocrete'.
Laying the foundation for ultra-low building materials
Agg-net, Web, 15/12/2022
Teeside University helping to create carbon-neutral cement.