Support for the journey to CO2-negative cement

Exciting task: Empa expert Barbara Lothenbach will lead the project. Image: Empa - The cement industry emits large amounts of climate-damaging carbon dioxide - but alternative binders based on magnesium carbonate could even bind CO₂. Concrete as a carbon sink? A research project at Empa is to explore the basics of this and prepare the stage for practical applications. More than four billion tons worldwide each year, and rising: Cement is by far the most widely used building material and inevitably releases large quantities of the CO₂ "bound" in the limestone during its production from burnt lime. Although manufacturers around the world have already significantly reduced the amount of their greenhouse gas emissions - but the more global warming progresses, the more urgently alternatives are called for. Cements based not on limestone, aka calcium carbonate (CaCO₃), but on magnesium carbonates are one source of hope. Empa experts have been investigating such binders for years on the basis of the mineral olivine, which is available in large quantities in Norway, for example.