C-Crete Technologies, led by Dr Rouzbeh Shahsavari, enters into a cooperative agreement with DOE to convert carbon ore to eco-friendly construction materials
C-Crete team will develop a novel carbon-based building material for the construction industry, turning carbon ore into a champion in the fight against climate change
HOUSTON, July 12, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- C-Crete Technologies has entered into a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy to develop and commercialize a new class of building materials made from carbon ore. The materials could be used in both the precast and cast-in-place construction markets as a cementitious substitute for portland cement, the world's predominant building material.
Carbon ore or coal, like any other natural mined ore (iron, calcium, etc.) does not create air pollution unless it is heated, explains Dr. Rouzbeh Shahsavari, founder and president of C-Crete Technologies, a company specializing in pioneering technologies for building materials.
"If one doesn't burn coal, this sedimentary rock isn't an environmental pollutant. It's just another natural ore like limestone, the feedstock for making ordinary portland cement," says Dr. Shahsavari. "C-Crete's low-energy, low-cost process converts carbon ore to high-performance, reactive cementitious binders without burning it. Our technology makes coal an environmentally clean and benign product, reversing the common negative perception of it, and turning coal into a champion in the fight against climate change."
Portland cement, on the other hand, is very energy intensive to manufacture. In fact, its production and use are responsible for 5 to 8 percent of total global CO2 emissions, creating an urgency in the quest for materials to improve or replace it.
C-Crete's preliminary results indicate that its new carbon-based material will match ordinary portland cement in performance and cost. The work with DOE will help translate the promising lab results into a scalable process to compete with Portland cement - the centuries-old building material.
Due to the increasing adoption of renewable energy resources, such as solar and wind, the demand for carbon ore has plummeted in the last decade. This creates an opportunity to convert the abundant, yet now underutilized ore, into building materials to accelerate the decarbonization of the construction sector.
The annual production of carbon ore in the United States is more than 700 million tons, about an order of magnitude larger than the U.S. annual cement production, which is about 80 million tons.
"From a supply-chain perspective, carbon-ore production and transport are existing, mature and widespread, which would facilitate the use of carbon ore for construction and infrastructure projects at scale," says Negar Rajabi, the tech-to-market lead of C-Crete Technologies. "Globally, carbon ore is among the very few ores that could compete in volume and cost with limestone in making cementitious binders. Additionally, our technology does not release CO2, as limestone does upon calcination to make cement. Plus, our process is capable of running on renewables."
C-Crete's innovation in utilizing carbon ore will provide a fresh alternative feedstock for building materials.
C-Crete Technologies works at the intersection of materials science, nanotechnology, multiscale computations, predictive analytics, software, hardware and manufacturing to drive the next generation of innovations for a low-carbon and energy-efficient world. http://www.ccretetech.com
Media Contact:
Negar Rajabi
[email protected]
SOURCE C-Crete Technologies
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