CARBON BUSINESS – Towards a sustainable business with CO2 curing of concrete

Project background

The built environment (buildings and infrastructure) makes up about a third of Finland’s climate emissions. Most of the carbon dioxide emissions in the built environment are caused by the consumption of energy during use, but a significant part is also formed by concrete construction and especially the use of cement in it. In the cement manufacturing 700 kilograms of CO2 per ton of clinker is released through a chemical reaction. CARBON BUSINESS – Towards a sustainable business with CO2 curing of concrete project is a continuation of the already implemented BECO – The role of concrete in a carbon neutral society and Concrete as a carbon sink – solutions for low carbon construction (BEHI) projects, in which a method has been developed to bind gaseous recycled carbon dioxide permanently to the end product while improving the concretes strength and speeding up the initial phase hardening.

CARBON BUSINESS – Towards a sustainable business with CO2 curing of concrete project continues the work of previous projects towards the industrial utilization of the results and answers the follow-up questions raised by the promising results achieved in the previous projects in the target companies. The goal of the project is to test and identify profitable carbon dioxide feeding technologies, determine the optimal binder composition and carbon dioxide binding amount, ensure the availability of recycled carbon dioxide profitably on the necessary scale, and examine the technical and economic viability of carbon dioxide curing as a whole.

Goal is to provide industry a viable product that uses CCUS carbon dioxide

The knowledge about different solutions generated in the project improves the possibility of concrete industry operators for sustainable, overall economic solutions that promote the reduction of greenhouse gases. As a long-term result, Kymenlaakso region is expected to get new business opportunities, business-oriented piloting and more impressive RDI cooperation.

The goal of CO2 curing is to utilize the captured CO2 from factories. Upscaling CO2 curing to concrete plants the industry is provided with a viable use which encourages the multiple industries to invest and move towards carbon capture technologies. Right now the most common use for recycled CO2 is to store it permanently to emptied oil fields for example in Norway. Alternative solutions for utilization of captured CO2 are relevant.