Cement, making it cleaner

[BeyondKnowledge]

Cement, the next thing becoming cleaner to make. 

As many know, the modern world uses a lot of cement and concrete. Windmills for example take over 120 tons of coal to make each one. Mostly to make the cement for the concrete. 

They are proposing to chang one ingredient to eliminate most of the CO2 emissions and reduce the energy needed to make the cement. 

https://www.earth.com/news/cements-clima...d-of-rock/

Now I am not posting this because it will do anything about the climate change. I am posting it because anything to make the world cleaner is better if it actually works. Unlike the windmills using all that coal.

[ArMaP]

They forgot to say two things:
1 - extracting basalt is not as easy as extracting limestone, basalt is hard rock, limestone is easy to break;
2 - basalt has 1/5 of the calcium, so to produce the same amount of cemente they will need 5 times more rock. Limestone extraction for cement production is already a problem in many countries, 5 times that is not going to be good.

[DBCowboy]

Cement, the next thing becoming cleaner to make. 

As many know, the modern world uses a lot of cement and concrete. Windmills for example take over 120 tons of coal to make each one. Mostly to make the cement for the concrete. 

They are proposing to chang one ingredient to eliminate most of the CO2 emissions and reduce the energy needed to make the cement. 

https://www.earth.com/news/cements-clima...d-of-rock/

Now I am not posting this because it will do anything about the climate change. I am posting it because anything to make the world cleaner is better if it actually works. Unlike the windmills using all that coal.

Romans made stuff that has lasted for over 2000 years, and we can't make cement lasting a decade.

wtf, over?

[BeyondKnowledge]

They forgot to say two things:
1 - extracting basalt is not as easy as extracting limestone, basalt is hard rock, limestone is easy to break;
2 - basalt has 1/5 of the calcium, so to produce the same amount of cemente they will need 5 times more rock. Limestone extraction for cement production is already a problem in many countries, 5 times that is not going to be good.

I thank you very much for that explanation. I thought there might be one. It looked too good but I am not that up on mining geology and rock yields.

Just another dead end then. I am certain many will get rich from it though.

This is how it is supposed to work. We find something interesting and possible. We past about it only to find someone that knows about it and what has not even considered. 

Again thank you.

[BeyondKnowledge]

Romans made stuff that has lasted for over 2000 years, and we can't make cement lasting a decade.

wtf, over?

I remember something about they actually figured that one out recently
 It is self healing by one ingredient being different. But it is not cost effective because that ingredient only comes from one quarry.

Yes, they don't make it like they used to.

[chr0naut]

Apparently a single Tesla Model 3 requires 30.82 tons of CO2 to manufacture. Since Coal is nearly 100% Carbon, that's 8.4 tons of coal per car. So, 1 windmill is equivalent to 14.6 Tesla Model 3's.

But of course, windmills are net renewable energy positive.

[Solvedit]

They may eventually succeed in using carbon-capture technologies to produce usable building materials on a large scale.  

If so, the windmills which are currently being built with coal-powered concrete production could someday begin to power building materials which clean up the atmosphere as they build things like new windmills and electric cars.

[BeyondKnowledge]

Apparently a single Tesla Model 3 requires 30.82 tons of CO2 to manufacture. Since Coal is nearly 100% Carbon, that's 8.4 tons of coal per car. So, 1 windmill is equivalent to 14.6 Tesla Model 3's.

But of course, windmills are net renewable energy positive.

But which generates more poawer 120 tons of coal or a short lived windmill? The windmills don't last as long as claimed and don't generate the amount claimed. How clean is a burning windmill. Many of them have burned.

[chr0naut]

But which generates more poawer 120 tons of coal or a short lived windmill? The windmills don't last as long as claimed and don't generate the amount claimed. How clean is a burning windmill. Many of them have burned.

Coal-fired turbines also catch fire. Did you know that?

Xcel releases previously confidential information about broken coal plant, Comanche 3

Xcel Energy’s on-again, off-again Pueblo power plant is offline again, this time for up to 8 months

IEEFA U.S.: Colorado’s newest coal plant, needing extensive repairs (again), was idle for a year

Dang, and that was one of those brand new "clean coal" ones!

Oh, noes, another one bites the dust:

Newest big U.S. coal-plant offline until 2027

- 'clean coal' is super-expensive serial failure 'engineering', apparently.



In a coal fuelled power generation plant, 120 tons of coal can be burned in 6 hours, producing about 294 Megawatts of power, under optimal conditions.

That is equivalent to the average power to be expected from 107 wind turbines in the same time-frame.

But wind turbines can be expected to reliably supply it for 20-25 years.

[ArMaP]

Romans made stuff that has lasted for over 2000 years, and we can't make cement lasting a decade.

wtf, over?

A decade? Portuguese cement lasts many decades. Even if exposed to the weather, it usually lasts around 60 years (the kind of cement that is not supposed to be exposed to the weather).