Eight per cent of the world’s carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions comes from cement, a key ingredient in concrete, the most commonly used construction material globally. But what if construction materials like concrete didn’t contain any cement, resulting in a low carbon footprint?

Rishi Gupta, engineer and professor in UVic’s Civil Engineering department, thinks this may be one way to combat carbon emissions. Gupta and his team in UVic’s Facility for Innovative Materials and Infrastructure Monitoring (FIMIM) are pushing the boundaries of what can be done with concrete by replacing cement with other sustainable binding materials, providing an alternative to carbon dioxide sequestration.

One approach is to use precast products like alkali-activated concrete paver blocks for pavements and parking lots, including those for remote and rural communities. This is done through Gupta’s work with India-Canada Impacts Centres of Excellence (IC-IMPACTS), of which UVic is an affiliate partner. IC-IMPACTS develops, tests and scales up local solutions for India and Canada.

The infrastructure theme of IC-IMPACTS led to Gupta’s first project on geopolymer concrete. Instead of ending up in a landfill, fly ash gets collected from coal-powered plants and then alkali activators are added to make it harden like concrete, producing geopolymer concrete that can be used for applications such as paver blocks. “Geopolymer concrete is technically cementless, as it doesn’t contain Portland cement, which is attributed to global greenhouse gas emissions,” he adds.

 Keep reading on uvic.ca