9 ms·
Ferrock: A Stronger, Greener Alternative to Concrete?
- anotheryou 8y agobut we have more sand than iron-dust, no?
- d4mi3n 8y agoGood question. I know for a fact that the type of sand is important, specifically that the shape and grain of the sand required for concrete makes a lot of readily available sand unusable for concrete. As for iron dust, I have to agree. The only way I could see iron dust being practical is if this tech was able to repurpose industrial waste (rusted up sheet metal, old rebar, etc).
- jacobolus 8y agoFrom the article: > It’s actually created from waste steel dust which is normally discarded from industrial processes and silica from ground up glass. The iron within the steel dust reacts with C02 and rusts to form iron carbonate. It’s this that is fused into the matrix of Ferrock and, like concrete, after it’s dried, it cannot be melted back into a liquid form but retains its hard, rock-like qualities. > ... But there’s skepticism from the cement industry that while Ferrock could be great for niche projects, it isn’t practical for large-scale industrial use, like highways for example. If steel dust suddenly goes from being a “waste” material to a highly-prized building resource, it’s price will increase exponentially and the costs of producing Ferrock may limit its application.
- e12e 8y agoWell, just don't switch iron/iron oxide dust for aluminum dust... http://thehomescientist.blogspot.com/2010/03/experiment-silicon-dioxide-thermite.html http://thehomescientist.blogspot.com/2010/03/experiment-sili...
- JulianMorrison 8y agoI read that the Sahara is useless, for example, because desert sand is rolled rounded. The only sand that concrete can use is the dug up, sharp cornered kind.
- MarsAscendant 8y agoI wonder if it's possible to "roughen up" smooth sand for this purpose. Shoot it against itself in a special machine, thus breaking it to smaller, sharp-edged pieces... or something. "Large Saharan Collider – not what you think it is!"
- mobilefriendly 8y agoConcrete "sand" is made by smashing quartz into tiny rough bits.
- timkpaine 8y agoSurprisingly we don't https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/world-facing-global-sand-crisis-180964815/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/world-facing-g...
- rebuilder 8y agoWe may be running out of suitable sand to use for concrete, but that doesn't mean iron dust is more abundant.
- ubittibu 8y agoI heard that there are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on earth, so we could use stars instead..
- zeristor 8y agoHave you tried mixing stars and water together?
- MarsAscendant 8y agoI believe that's the recipe for the Philosopher's Stone, from the old books. That's why the Middle-Age alchemists couldn't make one. Now we can.
- zeristor 8y agoPerhaps that’s how the sauna was invented
- darkpuma 8y agoYou're forgetting that it's easier to create rock dust from scratch than it is to create iron dust from scratch. That's important when you're comparing the two, since you can't simply scoop up iron dust off beaches and river banks anyway. Given the choice between manufacturing rock dust and manufacturing iron dust, the choice is obvious. To manufacture rock dust you: 1. Quarry rock. 2. Pulverize it. To manufacture iron dust you: 1. Quarry ore. 2. Pulverize it. 3. Smelt it (which requires coke, a basket of worms in itself.) 4. Cast it. 5. Grind it.
- benj111 8y ago>David Stone Nice Aptronym there https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptronym https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptronym
- dragosmocrii 8y agoTIL - aptronym
- codetrotter 8y agoThanks, the list of people with aptronym names was fun to read and the section about inaptronym names was even better. I read them aloud to one of my flat mates and we had a good laugh.
- dylan604 8y agoI just saw something in one of those websites with overloaded side columns that had an article about a UK police officer named Rob Banks.
- MarkSummer 8y agoThat's... hi-larious. Favorite from the Wikipedia names list: Don Black - white supremist.
- pulverizer 8y agoI sense reference to David vs Goliath
- ohiovr 8y agoLooks good. I wonder if is color fast for lack of a better word. Would it cause stains? 5 times harder.. superlative concrete?
- Synaesthesia 8y agoI wonder if it could be made at a reasonable cost at global scale.
- mrob 8y agoThis reads like an advert. The whole "carbon-negative" thing relies on the assumption that steel dust is a waste product, which seems highly dubious to me. Steel is commonly recycled, including steel in very small pieces such as machining chips. It's hard to believe that anybody producing steel dust in quantities sufficient for use as construction material would just throw it away. The fair comparison would include the energy needed for steel making, which needs even higher temperatures than the "staggering 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit" needed to make cement.
- JulianMorrison 8y agoLow grade iron scrap can probably be diverted from landfill, or reclaimed from it?
- CapitalistCartr 8y agoIron and steel are not normally put in landfills. Due to the ease of extraction, iron is the most recycled material on the planet.
- Animats 8y agoLow grade iron scrap goes to Nucor Steel. Nucor started in steel making rebar from scrap. Then they figured out how to continuous-cast better steel from scrap. Now they're the biggest steelmaker in the US. If it's steel or iron and you can get it to a scrapyard, it's going to be recycled. If it was a car, it's going to be recycled. If the magnets at the recycling center can pull it out of trash, it's headed for a steel mill.
- nerdponx 8y agoIf people don't do this already, the technology to do it cost-effectively probably doesn't exist.
- Animats 8y agoYes. It checks all the green boxes (CO2, Native American nations, EPA, etc.) but not the structural engineering boxes. Now if the tensile strength were 5x greater, that would be something. An alternative to concrete with rebar would be useful. Rebar corrosion is a huge problem and the limiting factor on the life of modern concrete buildings. Some way to use up recycled glass cullet has potential. There's a glut of that.
- JulianMorrison 8y agoLooks nice but I really wonder about its chemical properties over the longer term, and its other unexpected behaviours (how does it react to electrical discharge? fire? extreme cold? acid rain?).
- zeristor 8y agoI’m not sure why the article calls CO2 C02, did they just think zeros look better; it makes you wonder about the article. Are typos a known issue in searches? 1, I, or l, 0 and O https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashed_zero https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashed_zero
- abalone 8y agoWithout commenting on Ferrock's merits, I want to say I'm glad every time I hear concrete/cement's CO2 impact addressed. I feel that should be a MUCH bigger part of the conversation about any kind of construction as we look towards very sharply curbing emissions over the next decade. For example, "the wall". Obviously advocates of the wall for the most part don't give a crap about the environmental impact. But even on the Left I don't hear this cited often as a reason to oppose it (amongst many). The CO2 emissions from constructing a several hundred mile long concrete or steel border would be enormous. (Steel is also a major emissions source.) Even urbanists, who generally talk a lot about denser construction as having environmental benefits and are kind of "lefty", don't generally talk about the counterposing cost of concrete & steel emissions. I'm not saying it doesn't pencil out, but let's please always talk about it.
- lazyjones 8y ago> The CO2 emissions from constructing a several hundred mile long concrete or steel border would be enormous. (Steel is also a major emissions source.) This might still be worth if it prevents illegal migration of 1 million people per year from countries with much lower CO2 emissions per capita (e.g. Venezuela 6t/year) to the USA (16.5 tons/year). http://greennews.ie/carbon-footprint-of-trumps-proposed-us-mexico-border-wall-equivalent-to-annual-co2-emmissions-of-smaller-countries/ http://greennews.ie/carbon-footprint-of-trumps-proposed-us-m... estimates the carbon footprint of the „Wall“ as 48m tons - once. With my simplistic numbers above it saves up to 10.5m additional tons per year (i.e. N times that amount in N years). So its carbon footprint is amortized in less than 3 years. That said, I have no political opinion about the „Wall“ (being in Europe), I just like analyzing both sides‘ arguments.
- abraae 8y agoI love this counter-intuitive thinking. A while ago at dinner a friend said she was trying to do the right thing environmentally, but it was just too complex. (The case in point was her wanting an EV but hearing that while the car would be clean, there would still be emissions back at the power plant producing the electricity - true in many places but not in my country which has around 78% renewable grid energy). Your comment clarifies just how very complex it is understanding the overall impact on the environment of our actions. (No comment on whether a wall would actually prevent 1M illegal migrants a year).
- kristianp 8y agoThere are a couple of papers here that provide more details. http://ironkast.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/USC-Ferrock-Final-Paper-4.24.17.pdf http://ironkast.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/USC-Ferrock-F... http://ironkast.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Ferrock-basics.pdf http://ironkast.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Ferrock-basic...
- arthurfm 8y agoThe B1M YouTube channel recently made a video [1] covering concrete alternatives (Ferrock, Biomason bricks) and solutions for injecting CO2 into concrete (CarbonCure). It's really interesting. [1] https://youtu.be/wOE4UegzJ_M https://youtu.be/wOE4UegzJ_M
- AlphaWeaver 8y agoI'm curious how the patent will impact it's adoption. Was regular concrete patented when it started to be used? Depending on how strictly he enforces it, this could easily prevent Ferrock from becoming widespread.
- jSully24 8y agoDid a quick google on patents in this area and there are MANY! And, Thomas Edison even had concrete patents http://edison.rutgers.edu/cemepats.htm http://edison.rutgers.edu/cemepats.htm https://www.google.com/search?&q=concrete+patent&oq=concrete+patent https://www.google.com/search?&q=concrete+patent&oq=concrete...
- baybal2 8y agoThere are a lot of other portland cement alternatives that are not exploited despite being very cheap. There are literally mountains of flyash laying around in Europe without anybody wanting to use them for concrete.
- zackmorris 8y agoThe high temperature needed for industrial processes like making concrete is a perfect fit for concentrated solar furnaces. That's because there is a thermodynamic loss in taking heat energy to another form like electricity and back again. That's why natural gas heating is roughly 2-4 times cheaper than electric heating. I don't understand why every factory in the world doesn't have one of these attached to it to save close to 100% of their fuel costs for 4-8 hours of the day: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_furnace https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_furnace Some formulas on concentrator efficiency: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_solar_power#Efficiency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_solar_power#Effic... https://www.osapublishing.org/DirectPDFAccess/465BBDC3-CD88-DB70-A7D010CB8BBB020B_198416/oe-18-S1-A5.pdf?da=1&id=198416&seq=0&mobile=no https://www.osapublishing.org/DirectPDFAccess/465BBDC3-CD88-... (PDF): http://www.desware.net/sample-chapters/d06/e6-106-05.pdf http://www.desware.net/sample-chapters/d06/e6-106-05.pdf (PDF): https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/82769819.pdf https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/82769819.pdf It looks like the highest temperature achievable for a trough-shaped solar collector is about 400 C, whereas for a parabola, it's closer to the temperature of the sun (at least 2000 C). Note that the maximum possible temperature achievable for any concentrator is the temperature of the source, by the laws of thermodynamics: https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/279146/what-can-we-deduce-by-the-fact-that-mirrors-cannot-get-a-ray-hotter-than-suns-s https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/279146/what-can-... I don't have time at the moment, but maybe someone could derive the maximum temperature for a parabolic trough? I feel like it might be approximately the square root of a parabolic dish, but I don't know for certain. I could put together buying ferrock in large quanties (over $1 million) because of the many bike paths and greenbelts that still need to be poured along the river, canals and train tracks in my city. But using concrete or asphalt is perhaps too environmentally unfriendly, and I haven't found a good alternative (say pavers) because we still want people to be able to skate and have a comfortable bike ride. We also have football field-sized piles of glass bottles waiting to be recycled that would be another free input along with solar heat.
- Armisael16 8y agoWhat are you going to make your crucible out of that is transparent, won’t contaminate the contents and is strong enough at high temperatures to withstand regular use? Also if it wasn’t available 20 years ago there’s your reason.
- crankylinuxuser 8y ago> While the material composition and implementation techniques have already been tested at the University of Arizona, IronKast is currently in the process of commercializing the Ferrock patent and implementing it into pilot projects within marine environments. So, in other words bought and paid for by the taxpayer, and sold to the highest bidder on the commercial market. So much for encouraging use of this stuff. It'll be priced right out of the market because it's "green".
- Kalium 8y ago> So, in other words bought and paid for by the taxpayer, and sold to the highest bidder on the commercial market. Yes. And why this has become common practice might surprise you. Universities used to try to open technologies up to anyone who might want to use them. Cool new thing, come use it, free to all humanity! Problem was, for the most part nobody wanted the free thing. University outputs typically require some non-trivial amount of investment and work to actually be commercializable, and few companies want to invest when they can't know they'll get a commercial advantage over the competition out of it. Selling it on the commercial market, on the other hand, accomplishes two things. First, it puts some money back into the university, which might allow for more research for the taxpayer dollars (cool, right?). Second, it offers improved chances that the patents might actually turn into real stuff now that the owners of it have both a commercial interest and temporary exclusivity.
- newnewpdro 8y agoIsn't the mercury produced by cement manufacturing a more urgent issue than its CO2 output? CO2 is being attacked on many large-scale fronts, but last I checked the mercury in the oceans rendering seafood unsafe to eat was largely put there by the cement industry.
- nurettin 8y agoI wonder if this ferrock would have undesirable qualities when interacting with radio signals and electronics.
- justinclift 8y agoAccidental faraday cage? :)
- politician 8y ago(2016)