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Pre-Lecture refreshments will be served from 17.00
Concrete is generally considered to be the most widely-used manufactured material on Earth. Global demand is now of the order of 10 cubic km per year. This requires the manufacture of about 4 thousand million tonnes of cement per year, accounting for about 8% of global anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Thus, even small improvements in cement technology can have a significant effect on global CO2 emissions as well as on other globally-important sustainability indices.
Almost all concrete is made using hydraulic cements in which the main manufactured ingredient is Portland cement “clinker” (PCC). PCC itself is made by heating together a finely-ground mixture of limestone, clay and other minerals to about 1450°C. In the process, the “fossil” CO2 contained in the limestone is emitted. For this reason, more than half of the CO2 emitted in cement manufacture is essentially independent of the kiln fuel used. Although this “fossil” CO2 is slowly re-absorbed by concrete in use, its lifetime in the atmosphere is of the order of centuries and so this reabsorption doesn’t help us much in the medium term. Thus, alternative binder systems which release less CO2 during their manufacture are actively being sought by the cement research community. The acceptance criteria for alternative cements are, however, very stringent, because Portland cement is cheap, robust, and also very familiar to most users due to over a century of use. Moreover, the high alkalinity of Portland cement provides excellent corrosion protection to mild steel, making reinforced concrete a very durable structural material. Alternative binders must also perform this function, too.
During this lecture, the fundamental characteristics of hydraulic binders will be exposed, and several potentially important alternative options to Portland cements will be examined from scientific, ecological and industrial viewpoints.
Biography
Ellis Gartner is the Scientific Director for Chemistry at Lafarge’s Central Research (LCR) Laboratory near Lyon, France. He has a PhD in Physical Chemistry from the University of Cambridge (1975). After 3 years at the UK’s Building Research Establishment (BRE), he worked at the PCA’s R&D labs in Skokie, IL, from 1977 to 1985, and at W. R. Grace’s Washington Research Center in Columbia, MD, from 1985-1996, after which he moved to LCR. During a career spent almost entirely in industrial research he has published over 60 papers and 50 patents. He is a Fellow of the American Ceramic Society and of the Institute of Materials, Mining and Metallurgy (UK), and an Associate Editor of the Cement and Concrete Research Journal. He recently became a Visiting Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.