Use of Carbon Dioxide for Sustainable and Resilient Concrete Pavements
Status: Active
Objectives
Concrete is the most widely used man-made material in existence. It is second only to water as the most-consumed resource on the planet. In 2016, world cement production generated around 2.2 billion tons of CO2. More than half of that emissions associated with cement manufacturing arise from the calcination process. Together with thermal combustion, 90% of the sector's emissions could be attributed to the production of clinker. It is therefore necessary to explore alternative options for cement and concrete production used in public infrastructure to achieve decarbonization goals. One sustainable process is to sequester CO2 (2) (3) through concrete production to reduce cement content in the concrete without compromising resiliency and durability. Concrete with low cement content will exhibit reduced shrinkage and one that eliminates oxychlorides will definitely be resilient.
This research will examine through testing, measurements and observation, the performance of concrete made with the CarbonCure CO2 mineralization technology. It will generally entail an evaluation of the sustainability of mineralized concrete when the concrete is used for pavement purposes by collecting information on paved road applications.
Pursuant to these objectives this research will include the following:
- Constructing test sections of paved concrete at the MnDOT testing facility.
- Testing additional sustainable CO2 utilization technologies under development and deployment. A CO2-beneficiated reclaimed concrete water technology developed by CarbonCure and CO2 mineralized recycled concrete aggregate would offer additional sustainable alternatives for potable mix water and virgin aggregate.
- Performance of paved sections will be assessed against standard concrete durability parameters and other parameters of interest to NRRA.
Project team
Email the Project Team
Principal Investigator: Peter Taylor, Ph.D., Professor and Director, CP Tech Center at Iowa State University, ptaylor@iastate.edu
Co-PI: Halil Ceylan, Ph.D., Professor, CP Tech Center at Iowa State University, hceylan@iastate.edu
Technical Liaison: Bernard Izevbekhai, MnDOT, bernard.izevbekhai@state.mn.us
Project Technical Advisory Panel (TAP): Contact us to join this TAP
- John Donahue, Missouri DOT
- Dan Gancarz, Illinois Tollway
- Alf Gardiner, Braun Intertec
- Bernard Izevbekhai, Minnesota DOT (TL)
- Lieska Halsey, Nebraska DOT
- Jeffrey Meek, Minnesota DOT, Office of Sustainability
- Somayeh Nassiri, Washington State University
- Joseph Podolsky, Minnesota DOT
- Sadati SeyedHamed, CalTrans
- Xijun Shi, Texas State University
- Jake Sumeraj, Illinois Tollway
Related materials
- Initial Project proposal (doc), 4/21/2021