Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
However, as most of these technologies are still at the research stage, there
is currently very little information available to allow comparisons in terms
of energy consumption and CO
2
emissions as well as commercial viability
and cost although some work on this is on-going (Zevenhoven et al., 2011).
Detailed life-cycle analyses investigating all emissions and environmental
impacts, similar to those performed by lei et al. (2011) and Van der Heede
and De Belie (2012) on current cements, will be required. A number of the
initiatives above are strongly linked to global CO
2
mineral sequestration
initiatives for carbon management and there has been a recent trend towards
scale-up and demonstration projects suggesting that large-scale applications
will follow in the foreseeable future (Zevenhoven et al., 2011).
19.7 Future trends
As a recently developed material, reactive MgO in its wide-ranging promising
blends and applications has seen significant research advances being made in
the past few years. However, there is a significant amount of research work
still to be undertaken which will require extensive further investigations and
field validations before any commercial large scale use is feasible. Hence future
research trends will see continuation of the extensive on-going initiatives in the
investigation, testing and validations of a whole host of properties of reactive
MgOs including in particular long-term performance and durability in order
to understand with confidence the in-service performance of such cements.
And just as important will be the investigations of the global availability of
the raw materials with suitable low costs and low environmental impacts as
well as assessment of the life cycle of reactive MgO cements in comparison
with Portland cements. In addition, the current, very small annual global
production rate of MgO will need to significantly increase. And finally, if
the production of reactive MgO is largely associated with global carbon
management schemes then it is likely that life-cycle analyses will result
in favourable figures for their carbon footprint and their production will
significantly increase as a result.
19.8 References
Abdollazadeh, A (forthcoming), Characteristics and performance of pervious concrete for
green infrastructure. Forthcoming PhD Thesis, University of Cambridge, Cambridge,
UK.
Al-Tabbaa, A, Harbottle, MJ and Evans, CW (2007), Robust sustainable technical solutions.
Chapter 10 in
Sustainable Brownfield Regeneration: Liveable Places from Problem
Spaces
(Dixon, lerner and Raco Eds), blackwell Publishing.
Al-Tabbaa, A, liska, M, Jegandan, S and barker, P (2009), Overview of project SMiRT
for integrated remediation and ground improvement. International Symposium on Soil
Mixing and Admixture Stabilisation, Okinawa, May 2009.
