A carbon-neutral concrete prototype has just won the 2022 Obel Award. The solution aims to mitigate the environmental impact of the construction industry, which is responsible for 38% of all energy-related CO2 emissions, according to a UN report.
Dubbed Seratech, the material was developed by two PhD students from Imperial College London, Sam Draper and Barney Shanks. They discovered a simple way to eliminate concrete's CO₂ footprint: replacing part of the concrete's cement content with a type of silica created from carbon dioxide (CO₂) captured from factory smokestacks.
“The technology captures industrial CO₂ emissions directly from smokestacks and produces a carbon-negative cement replacement material, a silica,” the duo explains in a press release.
Only 40% of the cement content can be replaced in this way, yet the carbon capture and storage used to make the replacement material means that more carbon is stored in the concrete than is emitted during cement production, making it carbon-neutral.
“Although still at a ‘laboratory stage,’ the strength of the technology is that the raw materials used for Seratech’s products – waste CO2 and the mineral olivine – are naturally abundant across the globe, and the solution integrates into existing processes and equipment used in concrete production,” the press release continues.
The duo maintains that the product is low-cost and has great potential for low-carbon construction, and could even be implemented in cement plants worldwide without major changes to existing practices.
“It is an honor to receive the Obel Award. This visibility will help us engage people across the industry and scale up our technology. Humanity cannot afford to spend 20 to 50 years scaling up technology to provide us with sustainable materials. It needs to happen now,” said Sam Draper, one of the developers, upon receiving the award.
The jury, meanwhile, noted that “it is necessary to encourage ambitious, cross-disciplinary ideas that do not just provide a temporary or small-scale solution, nor an unrealistic major change to current practices.”
Founded in 2019, the Obel Award is presented annually by the Henrik Frode Obel Foundation to honor works or projects from the past five years that have made “outstanding architectural contributions to human development worldwide.” Each year features a different focus, with this year’s being embodied emissions. In 2021, the winning project was the Anandaloy Center, designed by architect Anna Heringer.
Via CicloVivo.
This article was written by Marcia Sousa. The translation is powered by AI.
