Iom3 Cement and Concrete Group Newsletter

IoM3 Cement and Concrete Group Newsletter

Issue 9–September 2006

Recent News

UK - industry carbon trading plan announced

The UK Government's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has announced the details of industry's contribution to reducing carbon emissions in the face of climate change. The plan focuses on companies responsible for high levels of emissions and will increase the amount of carbon covered under the scheme. The second phase of the European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) in the UK will be expanded to cover additional activities at 160 installations, responsible for 9. 5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide that are not covered in the current phase of the scheme.

From:

22-Aug-06

Launch of lean construction qualification

The first trainees are currently being signed up to a new, nationally recognised qualification that is open to individuals implementing lean improvements in construction businesses.

The new BTEC Level 3Advanced Award in Construction Lean Improvement Techniques will be awarded by the Construction Lean Improvement Programme (CLIP), and has been established by CLIP in partnership with RDI and the national awarding body Edexcel.

Those eligible for the qualification will be active participants in a CLIP improvement activity being undertaken by their employers – normally this would be a CLIP Masterclass of a minimum of 15 days. They will be assessed in terms of attendance – a minimum of 30 guided learning hours are required – and an Assessor’s Report based on observation of participation during the CLIP activity and written responses to questions posed by the assessor. The Assessor’s Report will be independently verified by Edexcel/RDI. A small amount of time, probably less than four hours, will be needed for more formal training to cover aspects of the syllabus not covered in the CLIP activity.

More information is available from Martin Watson, tel: 01923 664638, from the website at

BRE Press release 30th August 2006.

48th Mellor Lecture

Professor John Sharp’s entertaining and informative Mellor lecture ‘Surely we know all about cement – don’t we?’ is the opening article of the special issue of Advances in Applied Ceramics, containing highlights of last year’s Cement and Concrete Science Conference at Royal Holloway College (August 2006 Volume 105 Number 4).

Professor Sharp’s article covers the life of Joseph Mellor and gives a basic introduction to cement science, including sections on the structure of C-S-H, modelling studies and novel applications. Finally, Professor Sharp discusses a number of the durability problems that have been recognised in cement science over the last 30 years. Professor Sharp is, of course, well versed in this field and gives a thorough, informative, and occasionally controversial overview of a number of these problems, especially delayed ettringite formation and thaumasite attack.

Copies of the special issue of Advances in Applied Ceramics will be distributed to all delegates at this year’s Cement and Concrete Science Conference in Sheffield.

SUMACON News

Sumacon will be present at SUM 2006 - Sustainable Use of Materials, to be held at St Catherine’s College, Oxford (17-19th September 2006). The objective of this conference is to bring together individuals, organisations and communities concerned with the sustainable use of materials to share knowledge and relate experiences in an informal relaxed environment. The multidisciplinary nature of the SUM will provide a stimulating forum for delegates to identify and develop novel solutions to problems and research challenges across all aspects of the sustainable use of materials.

Further information can be obtained from;

Faraday Advance, BegbrokeSciencePark, Sandy Lane, Yarnton, Oxford,OX5 1PF.

T: + 44 (0)1865 283703

F: + 44 (0)1865 848785

Also, presentations from the 'Lime in Masonry Construction' workshop held at Heriot Watt earlier this year have now been uploaded onto the SUMACON web site ( and are available to download.

Calcium Aluminate Cement 2008

The final details are being arranged of ‘The Centenary Conference’, to be held in France in June 2008. More details to follow…

Computers & Concrete – An International Journal

This journal will be bimonthly in 2007, and beginning with issues 2005, the "COMPUTERS and CONCRETE, An International Journal (CAC)" has been indexed in the ISI products;

Science Citation Index Expanded
ISI Alerting Services
Materials Science Citation Index
CompuMath Citation Index

Euromat 2007

This conference will be held in Nürnberg on September 10-13 next year. There is far, far too much information to be included here, but further details can be obtained at

Of interest to readers of the newsletter will be Session B3 – Building Materials, containing the subsections;

Water repellent or not ...
Monitoring and life cycle assessment
Nanostructure of the CSH-phase and its interaction with moisture
Penetration of Chlorides and corrosion of steel in concrete
The Chemistry of Mineral-Based Construction Materials

Global Cement and Lime

The latest issue (August-September 2006) of GCL: Global Cement and Lime Magazine is now available for free download: (18.6Mb)

The magazine includes the latest news, as well as the exclusive inside story on American Cement's new cement plant project in Florida, and a full review of the Asian Cement Conference in Iran.

Photo competition

GCL will celebrate its 10th anniversary with a special issue in January 2007. GCL invites entries for the Global Cement and Lime Magazine Photographic Competition. The winning photo will be used on the front cover of the 10th anniversary issue of GCL Magazine (January 2007), which will be distributed to around 10,000 addresses world wide, with a total readership of around 80,000. The winner of the competition will also receive US$1000 as a cash reward. Anyone can enter. Full details and rules are at

GCL's Global Cement Directory

This is about to be published (see The directory includes a listing of the world's cement plants outside China, including their contact details, production capacities and map locations. The directory has been researched by a multinational team over the last year, to ensure that it is as up-to-date as possible. Please order your copy via the web site above.

The Global Cement Awards 2007

Nominations are now open for the Global Cement Awards 2007. Entry into the prestigious competition is free: last year's winners included Lafarge, Cemex, Mitsubishi Cement, and Grasim Cement. The deadline for entries is 1 December: enter now! (

Comment and Discussion

The article below was published some time ago in The Guardian. I’ve copied it in its entirety below, and I’m sure it will raise a few eyebrows.

A cracking alternative to cement

Alternative cement products make good environmental sense, writes Sean Dodson, especially if Britain is to meet its ambitious targets to reduce carbon dioxide emissions

Thursday May 11, 2006

The Guardian

In 1824 an English bricklayer named Joseph Aspdin rediscovered one of the great secrets of the ancient world. Burning limestone and clay together at an incredible heat - more than 2,700º fahrenheit - made the two minerals fuse together. Once cooled and ground into a fine ash, the resulting substance would, after mixing with water, set as hard as the Portland stone that gave it its name. And while his invention, portland cement, is seldom celebrated in the same breath as steam power or the spinning jenny or even the mass introduction of soap, it too - literally - laid a cornerstone of the modern industrial world.

Beloved of master builders, detested by their labourers and used by the Romans, cement supports the very ground beneath your feet and keeps the roof from crashing in; yet few outside the building trade spare the back-breaking bringer of toil much thought.

But maybe we should. Cement is one of the most environmentally hazardous materials in the world, adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than the entire weight of the global airline industry. According to the Sustainable Development Commission, 4% of CO2 is caused by aviation. Depending on how conservatively you do the sums, cement-based building materials, including concrete and asphalt, account for between 5% and 10% of all carbon dioxide emissions. Finding an alternative product to cement would, therefore, make excellent environmental sense, especially if Britain is to meet the government's ambitious target of a 60% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050.

Now, it is possible, if one squints very hard, to imagine a world without the luxury of cheap air travel. Harder still, one without the convenience of a car. But a world entirely without cement lies further out of reach, in an untamed place shorn of Tarmac, airport runways, road bridges, skyscrapers, underground stations or modern reservoirs. Such is our dependence on the stuff.

But while the environmental impact of cement production has been known for ages - Dickens described in Great Expectations "the sluggish stifling smell" of the kilns - few call for it to be punitively taxed. Friends of the Earth, for instance, could not produce a single spokesperson to speak about cement's effect on climate change; and what environmental campaigns there are, such as the recent protests against a tyre-burning kiln in Rugby, focus on what is burned to generate the heat, not the cement itself. The consensus has it that we are stuck with cement.

Not so, say the influential environmental bloggers at worldchanging.org, who recently identified a "whole slew of viable alternatives" to both cement and concrete ... "[that] give some hope that a much greener (and potentially more sustainable) model for concrete manufacturing will soon emerge".

These include a range of new technological solutions, including lighter foam-based concretes that require less energy to produce, and products like CeramiCrete, which is twice as strong so builders use less of it. But all cost more.

The slickest of these new solutions and, ultimately, one that could be produced most cheaply, comes from the unlikeliest quarter of all. A viable alternative to cement is actually being produced by the oil industry.

In a smart, regency-decorated office in Mayfair, sandwiched between the bespoke tailors of Savile Row and the swanky art galleries of Cork Street, Geir Robinson is talking about how a waste product from the oil refinement process could be used to cut our dependence on cement. Robinson is the director of UKM, a partner of Shell, the Anglo-Dutch oil giant that holds the patent to a new substance that, in its own way, could be as radical as Joseph Aspdin's.

Robinson is enthusing about something called C-Fix, sometimes referred to as carbon concrete, a "thermoplastic" heavy-duty binder developed by Shell and the University of Delft and already in use on the two busiest roads in the Netherlands. It is suitable, he says, for replacing 90% of concrete and asphalt applications. But it is the environmental benefits that excite him. "Three-and-a-half tons of carbon dioxide is saved by using a ton of carbon concrete rather than regular concrete," he beams.

Environmental benefits

This seemingly gravity-defying equation stems from the fact that the environmental benefits of C-Fix are twofold. "To produce a road, or a sea defence, and not use cement as a binding agent obviously stops that cement being produced, which stops the carbon from the cement production entering the atmosphere," Robinson says. The other benefit comes from making a practical use of what would otherwise be waste.

It works like this. When crude oil is "cracked" into its components, the top of the refinement process produces petrol, followed by diesel, light fuel oil and then heavy fuel oil. At the bottom of the barrel lies a "fraction" of blackened waste material. It is hard and sticky and of scant economic worth.

"The standard way of dealing with this low-grade oil is to mix it with light fuel oil to make more heavy fuel oil," says Robinson, sketching a diagram of the process on a notepad. "It gets burnt off and doesn't have to be treated as a waste. But that burning causes further CO2 emissions that cause global warming."

Robinson, an environmental scientist and former management consultant with Arthur Andersen, is earnest about its limitations. "In our wildest dreams we don't think we will replace concrete. But in certain applications where concrete isn't as good, like in heavy industrial roads or in salt water environments, we can replace it. That would in itself be fantastic for the environment."

The cement industry knows it faces huge environmental issues. Faced with spiralling fuel costs - more than 40% of the cost of cement comes from firing the kilns - it has worked hard to reduce its emissions. Last November the industry toasted its latest progress report at a House of Commons reception hosted by the Liberal Democrat MP Lembit Opik.

According to Liezel Tipper of the British Cement Association, rather than denigrate concrete we should embrace its own environmental credentials. Concrete's high thermal mass (making it hard to heat or cool) becomes relevant, as less energy is required to heat or cool buildings. "This reduces the need for air conditioning, which uses energy and releases more carbon dioxide," she says.

The trouble is, a modern cement kiln is, for the wider environment, the equivalent of having a cigarette permanently at your lips. Not only do modern plants consume as much energy as a small town; the kilns exhale clouds of toxic organic chemicals, such as dioxins and furans and various, possibly life-threatening, hydrocarbon compounds.

Acid gases generated by the immense heat of the combustion process, billow into the atmosphere, adding a further raft of heavy metals - lead, mercury, cadmium, chromium - to the toxic curl. These pollutants spewing from the stacks are joined by large amounts of dust and gas from the plant operations; and cement mixers guzzle a lot of petrol.

It is a filthy brew, redolent of what has gone wrong with industrialisation: environmentally and financially expensive and linked in several medical reports to the aggravation of lung complaints, especially asthma or emphysema. It is, however, the necessary price we continue to pay to progress in this late industrial age.

Carbon concrete, by contrast, has few of these disadvantages - if you discount the refinement process, itself a recidivist contributor to the great bank of carbon dioxide in the sky. To accept C-Fix is to accept that the oil is going to be pulled out of the ground regardless, so why not burn as little as possible. As Robinson says: "If just a tiny fraction of crude oil were sequestered in this way, western countries would be able to bring their carbon emission reduction in line with the Kyoto Agreement."

Cautious approval

Though any use of the waste products of oil refinement makes most environmentalists nervous, a few are prepared to cautiously endorse some of C-Fix's promise. David Santillo, a Greenpeace senior scientist based at its research laboratory in Exeter, welcomes the oil industry's attempt to crack the cement problem. Although he notes it is "early days to be making any substantial claims about universal applicability," he says the reductions it could bring in CO2 emissions by reducing cement production "are certainly worth exploring in more detail by government departments and contractors." But, he adds, "it will need to be backed by further independent research into its long-term structural stability and environmental performance before it can be promoted widely."

C-Fix's next big push is into the Arab states, rich in oil refineries and new building developments, but desperately short of fresh water and of the right kind of sand: because desert sand has the wrong characteristics, such areas have to import the sand needed to make traditional concrete.

But it is in Holland where C-Fix's most immediate application is most telling. It is being deployed at Ijmuidem harbour as a massive breakwater defence north of Haarlem. Six house-sized blocks of carbon concrete are currently holding the North Sea at bay. If successful, an awful lot more of it will be used along the flat coast of the Netherlands.

That's right: the thing that might keep back the rising tides caused by global warming could be a waste product from the oil refineries that helped cause it.

If you'd like to comment on any aspect of Technology Guardian, send your emails to

The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, Thursday June 1 2006

Asphalt is made from bitumen, not cement

Literature Bits and Pieces

Advances in Cement Research

Volume 18, issue 4, October 2006

Effect of concrete composition on durability in natural acidic environment

R. Wasserman and A. Bentur

Effect of additives on the properties of α-hemihydrate

W. Panpa and S. Jinawath

Diffusion of water and methanol vapour in hydrated Portland cement paste

J. J. Beaudoin and P. J. Tumidajski

Research on the absorbing characteristics of cement matrix composites filled with carbon black-coated expanded polystyrene beads

J. Du, S. Liu and H. Guan

Comparative studies of three methods for activating rejected fly ash

X. C. Qiao, C. S. Poon and E. Cheung

Influence of some organic admixtures on the rheological and mechanical properties of cement pastes

I. Aiad

Environmental Science & Policy

Volume 9, Issue 6 , October 2006, Pages 577-586

Environmentally sound destruction of obsolete pesticides in developing countries using cement kilns (review article)

Kåre Helge Karstensen, Nguyen Khac Kinh, Le Bich Thang, Pham Hung Viet, Nguyen Dinh Tuan, Doan Thi Toi, Nguyen Hoang Hung, Tao Manh Quan, Luong Duy Hanh and Doan Huu Thang

Cement and Concrete Research

Volume 36, Issue 8, Pages 1415-1574 (August 2006)

10thEUROSEMINAR on microscopy applied to building materials, University of Paisley, June 21-25, 2005

Guest editorial

John Hughes

Microscopy of historic mortars—a review

J. Elsen

Influence of compaction on the interfacial transition zone and the permeability of concrete

Iom3 Cement and Concrete Group Newsletter