FEATURE: It’s quite hard to understand, but although geopolymer low carbon concrete is not only greener but technically superior to regular concrete, and pretty well on a par cost-wise, it’s a hard sell to get it accepted in the market. In fact, one company that manufactures this material is choosing to ignore the sustainability element altogether.
SmartCrete CRC, which is due to wind up its research next year, spent $74 million on the technical research of low-carbon concrete. Yet regulatory barriers, a devastating lack of interest from clients and fear of risk prevent the material from becoming popular.
SmartCrete CRC chief executive, Clare Tubolets, told The Fifth Estate recently that the biggest barrier to uptake of low carbon concrete has been the reluctance of clients to take up the opportunity of this material.
Earth Friendly Concrete, a spin off company that is part of infrastructure firm Wagners, experienced this firsthand, with its low carbon geopolymer concrete.
The company is reluctant to say how much it spent to commercialise its product, but industry sources place it at between $40 and $45 million.
When it comes to the research of geopolymer, around 80 per cent of research papers were done in Australia, Tubolets says. While the government is publicly funding research into the material, the product has been more widely commercialised here in the US and UK than in Australia.
Michael Kemp, chief technology officer at Wagner and CEO of Earth Friendly Concrete, said his team of up to five people has been working on the material through trials and tribulations for 15 years. And the process has been “frustrating”.
The spinoff company started thanks to a philanthropic investment from John and Denis Wagner.
“It’s something we spent so much time and effort on, and initially it was okay.”
Kemp says the team understood that there would be barriers to entry for a new product. His team spent four years leading the development of the Australian Technical Specification code of TS199 for geopolymer concrete. “Because we didn’t use cement at all, we couldn’t be considered concrete.”
But the biggest issue remains the lack of appetite to trial and develop with the low carbon concrete.
While it’s understandable to look for low-cost products, the market often compares the cost of the new material to the cost of a product that’s 2000 years old, and that has the advantage of the same economies of scale.
The market, he says, keeps trying to get everything at the same price as it’s used to.
But of course, this doesn’t account for the sustainability benefits.
To prove its sustainability credentials and use case, Wagner invested in using the low carbon concrete in its own major projects, such as Pinkenba Wharf in Queensland, which featured 191 prefabricated hybrid panels, with claims it could be one of the world’s greenest wharf structures, using no cement and no steel in the deck.
Another was the well known Toowoomba Wellcamp Airport, which Wagners says is the world’s largest modern geopolymer concrete project, with 50,000 cubic metres of EFC heavy-duty aircraft pavement using no Portland (common) cement. The green specifications of the project attracted Boeing as a tenant of the airport.
But according to Kemp, “the reality is there’s no appetite to use it for green reasons.”
Which is why the company is now focused on talking about the technical merits of using its geopolymer cement, rather than marketing it as a “green concrete” because it’s “just a negative, from a commercial point of view,” Kemp said.
Compared to Australia, business for its concrete was doing much better overseas in the US, UK and Germany, where the company is both a supplier of low carbon concrete technology as well as a producer of concrete pipes.
The company uses technical performance to sell the product, with claims that it’s more fire and acid resistant, making it optimal for wastewater infrastructure and more durable. It still offers an 80 per cent reduction in embodied carbon.
According to research from Monash University,
Portland cement concrete is a worldwide used construction material. However, when Portland cement concrete is exposed to fire, its mechanical properties are deteriorated. The deterioration of concrete is generally caused by the decomposition of the Portland cement hydrate or the thermal incompatibility between cement paste and aggregate. Spalling, which is a violent or non-violent breaking off of layers or pieces of concrete from the surface of a structural element, may also occur when the concrete is exposed to rapidly rising temperatures. It is generally believed that spalling is influenced by the build-up of pore water pressure and thermal gradient in the concrete when exposed to elevated temperatures.
Geopolymer is an alternative cementitious material which has ceramic-like properties. Geopolymer belongs to the family of inorganic polymers. The chemical composition of geopolymer is similar to natural zeolite, but the microstructure is amorphous. It is suggested that geopolymer processes a potential superior fire resistance due to its amorphous and ceramic-like properties.
[In tests conducted for the thesis cited here], a method was presented to carry out spalling tests in small-scale specimens with exposure to rapid temperature rise using a commonly available electric furnace… the spalling behaviour of geopolymer concrete….[showed] that 100 per cent fly ash based geopolymer concrete had a better spalling resistance to rapidly rising temperature exposure than that of Portland cement concrete.
According to Kemp, the company has chosen to focus on technical benefits rather than environmental.
“That is more [of an internal issue], where the board feels good that they’re doing something better, but we’re selling it because of the technical benefits, and we found being greener is not a reason for someone to buy it.
“It is technically a better product.”
Green concrete really isn’t more expensive
The truth with low-carbon concrete is that if used for major infrastructure projects and at large volumes, the cost would be similar to traditional concrete, especially since you need less geopolymer concrete to fill a space, Kemp says.
“Is there going to be a cost premium for the first one? Yes. [But] if we’re doing the same volume as the rest of the market, it would be a similar price. You can’t do two cubic metres for the same price you do 200,000 cubic metres.”
Low-carbon concrete uptake could take off if it were a priority. But at the moment, there are hospitals and homeless shelters being built, and there are money constraints, Kemp says, yet it’s not being used.
“To develop a product, you need opportunities to use it.
“I could easily get 20 meetings tomorrow to talk about green concrete, but there [needs to be] a realisation in the marketplace that it’s not just Wagner that should be investing in it.
Kemp says there are currently high expectations that a supplier would “come in with a product that would work first go” and there needs to be more understanding, whether it’s sharing the risk or management of risk.
At the moment, opportunities are only in major projects with niche applications. To increase uptake, Kemp said councils and developers could start with low-risk projects but use them with more regularity, such as precast noise walls, moving up to precast or in situ crash barriers, up to precast abutment, then eventually a precast bridge deck girder.
Kemp said his company has also done pre-stressed concrete bridges for councils before.
Lack of demand from the government
The government could help with more uptake, Kemp says.
For instance, when the Queensland Department of Education was looking for a school builder, the company offered low-carbon concrete, but the offer was rejected because the cheapest concrete was preferred.
There’s also the Brisbane Olympic Games, which has not one green requirement in its contracts.
“I would say private industry is doing more than the government is.
“There’s just a general conservatism in that market. Understandably, when you are building things that last a long time, there’s no incentive for the government departments to try anything new.”
More demand overseas
Kemp says the company operates seven concrete batch plants just in Southeast Queensland, all of which have the ability to create both low carbon and traditional concrete.
The company also sells low carbon concrete technology and activators overseas to concrete suppliers.
And concrete is “a radius game” where the closest batch plants to a project almost always win the supply contract due to the nature of concrete mixtures, which stiffen rapidly. For the same reason, says Clare Tubolets, China’s idea of using iron ore tailings in concrete wouldn’t be viable in Australia due to where the mines are located.
The first step
In the end, while everyone wants to talk about it, Australia is not ready to pay for low carbon concrete, Kemp says. He encourages the government and the private sector to take small steps towards including low carbon concrete in their projects.
“If a small amount of each project went to innovation, you would actually move the industry forward in leaps and bounds.”
“Allowing even 5000 metres on a 100,000-metre project would allow entrepreneurial businesses to try things and get feedback on them, rather than have innovations stuck in a lab.”
