Eco-Concrete essay

The basic goal of Eco Concrete

The basic goal of Eco Concrete is to reduce carbon emissions. Some businesses have developed environmentally friendly concrete by substituting some cement with a product called fly ash, which gradually reduces the carbon footprint of concrete by 10 to 25 percent compared to a typical combination. Fly Ash is an undesired byproduct of coal-burning power plants, according to Jérôme (p. 34). Typically, this fly ash is put to concrete, where it behaves like cement and hardens and strengthens the concrete. When Portland cement is present, this occurs. Typically, Eco Concrete has a color that is comparable to regular concrete. It can be utilized in bare and as colored as well.

Initiatives to Reduce Environmental Footprint

Many companies have taken great pride in the initiatives where they come up with ways of reducing the environmental footprint. One of the initiatives is the concrete which is recycled. Once this concrete is manufactured and then transported to any site, all the remains or in our case the waste concrete, is used in coming up with the Interlocking Mass Blocks. These blocks mainly use the concrete which is unwanted to produce another substance or product that gives the unwanted concrete extra importance as a salable merchandise (Carette, pg.29). These blocks made from concrete are therefore used in the commercial sector and rural for the storage of substance material, walls that are recalling, those walls which are dividing and other several materials. Another initiative is based on recent fuel-efficient automobiles like trucks. Concrete will mainly be transported through these trucks which usually use substantially less fuel.

Is Concrete Eco-Friendly?

There is a question which usually rises on if concrete can be eco-friendly. This can be answered by focusing on several important things. To start with is the traditional concrete. This concrete which is traditional is usually made from mixing sand, cement, gravel, and water (Jelidi, pg. 47). Taking into account the amount of energy required to heat, mill, mix and transport this concrete, this can be concluded that making use of this concrete which is traditional in green building, is not effective in any way at reducing the carbon footprint of its handlers. Luckily, substitutes of cement which are viable and the alternatives of concrete are currently available in making concrete a truly green substance. This allows the last users to enjoy the assistances of concrete without making any sacrifice on their pledge to the environment.

Alternatives to Concrete

Another important thing is focusing on the alternatives of concrete. In addition to the substitutes of cement, there are other several ways of transforming concrete to become more substantial. This mainly is based on two key principles of the environment which are recycled and reduce. One of the alternatives is the use of recycled combined materials and measures which end up in decreasing the amount of concrete required to complete a job (Ahmed, pg. 37). Making use of the recycled substances or materials have mainly gained reliability and momentum in the industry of concrete and aggregate is currently being mined from diverse solid wastes. Another alternative can be to papercrete concrete which is made through the use of waste paper as the material of aggregate. These mixtures of concrete still depend on the cement usage, but in this case, the amount of cement used stands for a fairly small percentage of the material that is cured on volume. Therefore, this can be argued that this alternative is eco-friendly when compared to the traditional concrete.

Another eco-concrete alternative is that concrete which is produced in a dry-process furnace. These kilns or furnace are much more thermally efficient than the kilns which are in the wet-process and they severely reduce the consumption of the energy. Looking for options which are sustainable can also be an eco-concrete and also being eco-friendly (Slaheddine, pg. 16). The rise of new substances of cement and concrete alternatives has convinced a lot of green builders that concrete can widely be a product which is eco-friendly. If it happens that the concrete one chooses is really eco-friendly, one is in a position to enjoy the many benefits of countertops, concrete flooring, sinks and more, without any feeling that one is trying to be an enemy of the environment.

Reducing the Carbon Footprint of Concrete

Normally, concrete is believed to be one of the most used material in the world. This matter because the production of cement, which is the main ingredient of concrete, accounts for five percent of the world carbon dioxide emissions which are attributed to the activities of human. This may also be the factor causative to the world change in climate. In other words, making concrete to be so eco-friendly (Bouslama, pg. 23). Therefore, there have been ways which have been grown in order to decrease the carbon footprint of concrete. It is believed that, as manufacturing of cement is the main contributor of carbon dioxide emissions, changes which are beneficial to the processes of manufacturing can decrease those emissions substantially.

The first one is reducing the indirect releases by decreasing the fossil fuels required for firing up the kilns to develop the mixtures of limestone. Another one is to reduce the direct releases from the process of calcination, usually by dropping the amount of limestone required or else revising the method of the mixture taking place in the calcination (Juhart, pg. 42). The last one can be making use of carbon capture and storage methods to trap carbon dioxide which is released. This is either directly or indirectly, from the process of manufacturing cement. With all that, concrete can effectively become eco-friendly hence reducing the level in which climate are changing globally.

References

Carette, Jérôme, and Stéphanie Staquet. “Monitoring and modelling the early age and hardening behaviour of eco-concrete through continuous non-destructive measurements: Part II. Mechanical behaviour.” Cement and Concrete Composites 73 (2016): 1-9.

Jelidi, Ahmed, and Slaheddine Bouslama. “Use effects of blast furnace slag aggregates in hydraulic concrete.” Materials and Structures 48.11 (2015): 3627-3633.

Juhart, J., et al. “A new combined filler concept for eco-concrete.” Proc. of 14th International Congress on the Chemistry of Cement (ICCC 2015). 2015.