New Green Concrete Developed -- Implications For The Building Industry

In the national discussion about green buildings and green development, there is considerable hope that the use of concrete can be made more climate and eco-friendly. Some recent breakthroughs make that more possible .

Jeff Salton at Gizmag.com reports:

"Concrete is the most prevalent building material on the planet, and though the world would be pretty flat without it (not many tall buildings and structures), it does come at a price – around 5-8 percent of all human-generated atmospheric CO2 comes from the concrete industry. A culprit is Portland cement, the binding agent in concrete. It’s the most widely produced man-made material on earth. Production of Portland cement is currently exceeding 2.6 billion tons per year worldwide and growing at 5 percent annually. To halt these alarming pollution figures, innovative research on geopolymer concrete, along with ways of using a waste byproduct from coal-fired powerplants, is being conducted by Dr Erez Allouche, assistant professor of civil engineering at Louisiana Tech University and associate director of the Trenchless Technology Center.

A greener alternative, inorganic polymer concrete (geopolymer) fits into an emerging class of cementitious materials that utilize ‘fly ash’, one of the most abundant industrial by-products on earth, as a substitute for Portland cement. Geopolymer concrete has a number of benefits. The first is it has the potential to substantially curb CO2 emissions. It can also produce a more durable infrastructure capable of lasting hundreds of years, instead of tens. And by utilizing the fly ash, it can conserve hundreds of thousands of acres currently used for disposal of coal combustion products, and protect our water ways from fly ash ‘contamination’, too." See full article.

First Carbon Neutral Building

An Australian development and construction company, is about to build the world's first carbon neutral office building. They call it the Pixel Building.

Inventorspot.com reports:

Here are some of the Pixel building's exciting green features planned:

Supply of 100% fresh outside air at a rate three times the minimum Building Code requirements. This air will be distributed through the floor with an individual control at each work station, in much the same way as vents work on a car dashboard.

An absorption heat pump chiller, to be used to heat and cool the building. The chiller uses ammonia as refrigerant and has no harmful ozone, global warming or legionella emissions. (See Legionnaire's Disease)

Rainwater providing most of the water supply. In an Australian first, grey water (non-industrial, non-waste water) will be recycled through a unique reed bed system that also acts to shade the windows.

The building will include exposed concrete ceiling slabs to be cooled via pipes embedded in the concrete and carrying cooled water.

Metering will be installed on every floor, -- if an analysis shows any irregularities, the energy and water use will be fine tuned.

More than 75 per cent of the building’s roof will be covered with native grasses in the form of a green roof. The grasses filter the rainwater and insulate the structure. See full article.