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Construction Tech Review | Wednesday, February 05, 2020
The demand for construction materials that can reduce carbon emissions and those that support sustainable and energy-efficient buildings is increasing.
Fremont, CA: The construction industry is innovating new building materials that can solve the industry’s existing challenges. Now, the demand for materials that have enormous potential to build sustainable and energy-efficient buildings is increasing. There is a huge demand for materials that can reduce carbon emissions. Here are some of the innovative materials under study from the researchers.
Recently, Researchers at the University of Colorado, Boulder have developed a process that utilizes organic material comprised of cyanobacteria, warm water, sand, gelatin, and nutrients to form microbes that help to cement the sand together. The developed mixture is poured into molds to develop blocks like bricks. Although the material is weaker than traditional concrete, a 2-inch cube can bear an average-sized person to stand on, and larger blocks of the size of shoe blocks can be used as bricks at the construction site, according to the research. This is a type of living concrete that can reproduce and be a lower carbon alternative to concrete.
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Here is another way to make a brick from 100% recycled material developed by Gabriela Medero, a professor at Heriot-Watt University’s School of Energy, Geoscience, Infrastructure and Society in England. She had been working on this for nearly ten years. She named the brick as K-Briq that can come in any color and behaves like traditional clay brick. The K-Briq produced from recycled construction and demolition waste generates one-tenth of the carbon dioxide emitted by a conventional fired brick.
Another manufacturer of concrete materials is planning to commercialize a technology that will prolong reinforced concrete’s useful life to more than 200 years, which is twice the length of its current lifecycle. This method employs a new IHI- developed machine that uses the same raw materials as traditional concrete, thereby lowering repeat costs. The machine halts the development of air bubbles when pouring concrete by vibrating. This will remove air pockets while putting pressure on the mixture and reduce the holes on the surface by about 70%, and the technology is specially designed for infrastructure projects.
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