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PARIS, August 28, 2009 - A group of researchers led by Texas-based Rajan Vempati is hoping to kill two birds with one stone by reducing the carbon footprint of cement using waste from rice production, one of the world’s most important food by-products.
Vempati’s engineering firm ChK Group has developed patented technology to replace up to 20% of cement with rice hull ash (RHA), produced by burning rice hulls, which would normally go to landfill, at 800° C in aerobic conditions. The rice hull ash used is carbon neutral, since it comes from biomass, so when added to cement would reduce the environmental impact of the world’s most prolific building product. In current cement production, “For each ton of cement produced, one ton of CO2 is released,” Vempati explains to Agrion. “If you add RHA, it means less CO2.”
The addition of RHA, which has an opaline silica content of 80%, has additional properties that can be useful to the building industry too: “It increases the compressive strength, which is very good for skyscrapers, and makes the cement impermeable, preventing corrosion,” Vempati comments.
He predicts that the company could produce 15,000 tons of RHA per year, and that it will take between one and two years to begin commercial production, dependent on funding. “We are predicting a good return on investment,” he says, declining to give a more detailed financial forecast. So far, pilot-scale research has been funded by a Small Business Innovation Research grant from the US National Science Foundation. Following the publication of the research late June, Vempati has seen interest from companies involved in cement, flooring and grout production.
Additionally, the technology could be useful in developing countries like China and India, which are undergoing rapid development and therefore have extensive needs for building materials like concrete, and also are major rice producers. “They could use it for major construction projects,” Vempati adds.
Currently, rice hulls are either burnt, which is problematic in terms of the fumes produced, or sent to landfill, where their highly reactive nature means that when they decompose, they create subsidence. Some 650 billion tonnes of rice are produced worldwide each year, according to figures from the US Department of Agriculture.
According to the World Business Council on Sustainable Development’s Cement Sustainability Initiative, cement production is responsible for 5% of global manmade CO2 emissions. Some 2.8 billion tonnes of cement are produced worldwide annually, according to research firm Freedonia Group, and demand is expected to grow at an average rate of 5.3% per year through 2012, led by growth in developing markets.
Alex Wynne
Photo credit: Flickr, Creative Commons
