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Can We Live Without Concrete? (cnn.com)
A combination of cement, water and ground rock or sand, on the surface concrete might seem crushingly mundane. Yet it has defined construction in recent centuries and with it, in part, modernity. From a report: But do we need to re-evaluate our concrete habit for our sakes and the planet's? Production of cement is disastrous for our biosphere, while the degradation of many concrete buildings has some construction experts predicting a colossal headache in the future. There are myriad proposed solutions, such as changing the way we make concrete, creating sustainable alternatives or doing away with it altogether. But would we want to live in a world without concrete? And what would that world look like?
"We make more concrete than anything else, any other product, apart from clean water," says Paul Fennell, professor of clean energy at Imperial College London. One 2015 report estimates that each year approximately three tons of concrete are used for every person on Earth -- roughly, 22 billion tons. To put that in context, a recent study estimated that 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic have been produced, ever. Manufacturing cement, concrete's binding agent, is energy-intensive, Fennell says. Ordinary Portland cement -- the most common form in concrete -- is produced by baking lime in a kiln and emits approximately one ton of carbon dioxide for every ton of cement. Concrete production is responsible for approximately 5% of global man-made CO2 emissions, according to the World Business Council for Sustainable Development.
"We make more concrete than anything else, any other product, apart from clean water," says Paul Fennell, professor of clean energy at Imperial College London. One 2015 report estimates that each year approximately three tons of concrete are used for every person on Earth -- roughly, 22 billion tons. To put that in context, a recent study estimated that 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic have been produced, ever. Manufacturing cement, concrete's binding agent, is energy-intensive, Fennell says. Ordinary Portland cement -- the most common form in concrete -- is produced by baking lime in a kiln and emits approximately one ton of carbon dioxide for every ton of cement. Concrete production is responsible for approximately 5% of global man-made CO2 emissions, according to the World Business Council for Sustainable Development.
Can't live with it, can't live inside it.
Hemp is a good alternative to concrete. In addition it is renewable and extracts Co2. Plus it makes other useful things like clothing. Unfortunately the cotton industry is preventing the world from growing it. It is those people that are preventing us from having buildings made from hemp today.
Why do you propose changes to make everyone's life worse?
Figure out a way for life to actually be better. That's what you did in the 1970s when there was air pollution and water pollution. Air pollution was a problem, not a fear about a possible problem.
Fund some research to create something better than concrete if you want something better than concrete.
Don't ask us to give up living modern lives and mire ourselves in artificial poverty. That's not something Americans or Asians will do. Europeans might.
The crux of the article was Rammed Earth, which I think is a great replacement for concrete for certain applications (some load-bearing vertical walls mainly). Dirt cheap, clay & sand.
Some applications of concrete are frivolous and I think can be replaced. The reason is mostly cost and availability, and the current labor force is skilled with using it. The wall-facade material of choice before concrete, and before gypsum drywall, was Lime plaster. For wet or exterior applications I am in favor of using lime as it is less carbon-intensive than concrete and produces a beautiful lighting effect from birefringence (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birefringence), owing to the tiny calcite crystals that form when it cures back into limestone. See http://www.sapphireelmtravel.com/travel-journal/chefchaouen-morocco-blue-city for an example.
There's also benefits to the water vapor breathability of lime vs. concrete (which doesn't breathe, unless it's cracked).
Producing Lime plaster is less carbon-intensive than cement as it requires lower temperatures, and the CO2 driven off by the limestone during calcining (which happens in Ordinary Portland Cement production as well) is mostly re-absorbed by the slaked lime as it cures back into limestone (leaving the net CO2 footprint coming from the fuel used to calcine the lime, if coal or natural gas or wood is used, although perhaps decades into the future someone comes up with a nuclear-fueled kiln, electric or high temp gas or whatever).
The big downside to lime plaster is the time it takes to cure, and what that does for timelines and labor costs. It usually requires multiple thin coats (with a week or more between =3/8 inch coats - need time for CO2 to reabsorb as carbonic acid which also requires the material be damp, but not covered in water) which blows up the labor costs.
https://johnspeweik.com/2011/10/27/the-lime-cycle/
The upside to using lime plaster is there's a wealth of historical information on what to do with it... much of the "bling" of the pre-1800's architecture can be traced to the use of lime or limestone.
E.g. the Moroccan process of Tadelakt - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tadelakt
Venetian plaster - https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/venetian-plaster-trend-guide
the real at&t mix
They are starting to build wooden skyscrapers http://www.bbc.com/future/stor...
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
The post is based on a false premise: that CO2 production is inherent in making concrete. There is already a process to not do that. Further, most of the CO2 is made from generating the heat to make the concrete. Most of that CO2 production is low-hanging fruit to eliminate.
This is just more chicken little chicken shit.
Sorry, forgot the link:
https://phys.org/news/2012-04-...
The lime emits CO2 as CaCO3 converts to CaO. It does not absorb back into the material in the use-case of Portland Cement.
Lime plaster, which I posted about further down, DOES bring that CO2 back into the material (as it cures by Ca(OH)2 converting back to CaCO3+H2O with the introduction of carbonic acid, i.e. CO2 dissolved in a thin film of water).
the real at&t mix
They compared concrete to plastic, but most of the weight (about 85%) in concrete is sand and rock. Although even with that the world uses a lot of cement.
Rather than looking for alternatives I'm guessing this is a plea to make the manufacture of cement more environmentally friendly (green energy for the heat, capture the CO2, etc.). That would make far more sense than trying to find an alternative to concrete.
It's called indentured servitude to the state.
When you depend on the state, you will vote to empower the state to hold power over you. Because, no longer will people vote out of optimism of choice, rather, out of fear of having their state provided "benefits" taken away.
Life is not for the lazy.
"Concrete is as good as stone, and you see how long ancient Greek, Roman, and Egyptian stone structures have stood. "
The Romans built almost everything with concrete, also the 'stone' structures you mean. The stone was usually only a thin outer shell to contain the poured concrete.
Also their concrete was (and is) much more resilient, it didn't crack as easily as our Portland variant. Portland cement wouldn't last for millennia, it sometimes doesn't take decades to make it fail.
"Recently, it has been found that it materially differs in several ways from modern concrete which is based on Portland cement. Roman concrete is durable due to its incorporation of volcanic ash, which prevents cracks from spreading."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
We use concrete because concrete is cheap. Really, really, cheap. You can get similar results with other materials for many applications but there are few materials that are as readily available, easy to use, and inexpensive as concrete. Come up with a material with usable performance and a similarly low price point and you can be sure we would use a lot of that.
FYI one ton of concrete is a piece roughly 0.42m^3. So they are saying we each use a piece of concrete about the size of a desk each year.
When I was little, I was told a house made of strawbale and another made of wood failed to survive severe weather, particularly strong rain[1] and wind.[2] Or have I been duped all these years by the brick construction lobby?
[1] "The Pros and Cons of Straw Bale Wall Construction In Green Building"
[2] "The Three Little Pigs" by Joseph Jacobs
If we could teach AI to quarry, transport, shape and stack rocks at least as well as humans did in the 17th century, we could literally build castles (and bridges and aquaducts) with very little energy input. Rocks are everywhere, and an army of AI powered instruments could be programmed to improve on the work of even the best stonemasons: If they scanned each available stone that comes from a quarry, algorithms could design the optimal stacking arrangements to minimize gaps and maximize structure stability. They could "solve" a construction project like it's a giant 3D puzzle, thus minimizing the number of stones that would need to be chiseled. But even chiseling stone with machines uses very little energy. The pace of construction would only be limited by the number of autonomous tools brought to bear, and they themselves could turn out to be cheap and mass-producible. Sure, you can't build skyscrapers from rocks, but I would happily live in a city of six story rowhouse blocks built from stone. The neighborhoods in Europe that are actually built in this way are beautiful, functional and pleasant to live in. With AI building tools that sink the cost of labor to almost zero, I think we should explore returning to some of these old, well-tested building methods and architectural designs.
Even worse:
each year approximately three tons of concrete are used for every person on Earth -- roughly, 22 billion tons.
Every year we are adding 22 Billion tons to the weight of the earth. Sooner or later, that's going to start having an effect.