Swiss researchers have high hopes for concrete. This means that the excess CO2 currently in the atmosphere could be permanently stored within 100 years.
Reducing CO2 concentrations to 1988 target levels will require removing an estimated 400 billion tons of carbon from the atmosphere, as Swiss Federal Research and Materials Testing Institute Empa explained in a statement on Monday. The results published in the journal ‘Resources, Conservation and Recycling’ show that the 400 billion tonnes of excess carbon could be stored in building materials such as concrete by the middle of the next century.
Atmosphere as a ‘mine’ with CO2 as the raw material of the future
For the study, researchers compared the mass of globally used materials, such as concrete, asphalt and plastics, with the amount of carbon that needs to be removed from the atmosphere. However, the calculations are based on the assumption that sufficient renewable energy will be available after 2050 to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, as the process proposed by the researchers is very energy intensive.
“Mining the Atmosphere”
The research is part of the research initiative ‘Mining the Atmosphere’. According to Empa, their goal is to create a completely new global economic model and an associated industrial sector that uses CO2 as the raw material of the future. CO2 is first converted into chemical raw materials such as methane or methanol. These are then further processed to replace conventional building materials and products now made from crude oil or natural gas.
Source: Krone
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