A research team from University of California, Los Angeles, has developed a breakthrough system that transforms "waste CO2" into gray blocks of concrete.
The team is led by Indian-origin professor of civil engineering at UCLA, Gaurav Sant, who compares the process to baking cookies.
Gaurav Sant's leading a team called Carbon Upcycling UCLA, which is one of 10 teams competing in final round of the NRG COSIA Carbon XPrize -- a global competition that aims to develop breakthrough technologies for converting carbon emissions into useful products.
While there's competition from others, what's unique about the UCLA system is that it doesn¡¯t require the expensive step of capturing and purifying carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, according to an IEEE Spectrum report.
It quotes Gaurav Sant claiming that his team¡¯s approach is the only one that uses carbon dioxide as its spewed out of factory chimneys or automobile vehicles, and incorporate it into the concrete manufacturing process. The team has also formed a company,?CO2Concrete, with an aim to commercialize their technology with construction companies and other industrial partners.
The global race for using greener concrete techniques is on right now because there's great opportunity for disruption in this space, as the potential global market for waste-CO2 products used to make useful products is approximately $5.9 trillion a year, according to Carbon180.
The world produces approximately 4 billion tons of cement every year, and generates about 8 percent of global CO2 emissions, which is quite a lot if you think about it. If Gaurav Sant and his UCLA team can find a way to scale their CO2 cement making technique, they can potentially make a huge dent into global CO2 emissions with their disruption.
Starting from March 2020, Gaurav Sant and his UCLA team plan to conduct a three-month demonstration at a concrete producing plant, where they aim to use half a ton of CO2 to produce 10 tons of concrete daily.