MIT Researchers Announce Cement Breakthrough

By The WBUR Newsroom
Sep 10, 2009, 12:20 PM
3 Comments

A team at MIT says they’ve made a breakthrough in studying cement that could reduce worldwide greenhouse gas pollution.

Researchers have for the first time decoded the atomic building blocks of cement, an ingredient in concrete, and the most used material on earth after water.

Professor Franz Ulm said now that scientists understand cement’s structure, they can focus on changing it to make both cement and concrete “greener.”

“The ultimate goal of this whole project is to come up with greener concrete solutions,” Ulm said. “So, otherwise said, that concrete can actually become part of the solution and not just a problem.”

The research appears in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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ms

Did this article actually have a point? The writer gave absolutly no data or examples- Who even knew cement was an issue? Why is cement not “green”? This must be the most vague article on yahoo! Fire this idiot!
http://wbur.org N Kanavis

The article is totally disjointed.I assume that it implies that to manufacture cement from limestone requires a great deal of energy.Limestone has to be mined then heated in large kilns to drive off carbon containing compounds, the result being fused clinker. This had to be ground in mills with additives to produce cement. How will this atomic structure work alleviate the energy consumption and gas emission to the atmosphere??
Jeremy

To: ms.
The article has an important point. The production and transportation of concrete is immensely energy-inefficient, due to the very-high temperature required to produce its components, including CEMENT, plus the fuel-intensive mode of transporting it (by cement mixer truck) to the job site. THAT is why concrete is not “green.” By better understanding the nature of cement, it may be possible to make it stronger, lighter in weight, and for less energy…you idiot.