“Cement production accounts for more than 7% of global carbon dioxide emissions—more than sectors like aviation, shipping, or landfills,” notes MIT Technology Review. But those carbon emissions could be reduced a lot by using electricity rather than extreme heat in the production process for cement:
Humans have been making cement, in one form or another, for thousands of years….The modern version of hydraulic cement—the sort that hardens when mixed with water and allowed to dry—dates back to the early 19th century. Derived from widely available materials, it’s cheap and easy to make. Today, cement is one of the most-used materials on the planet, with about 4 billion metric tons produced annually.
Industrial-scale cement is a multifaceted climate conundrum. Making it is energy intensive: the inside of a traditional cement kiln is hotter than lava in an erupting volcano. Reaching those temperatures typically requires burning fossil fuels like coal. There’s also a specific set of chemical reactions needed to turn crushed-up minerals into cement—and those reactions release carbon dioxide, the most common greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.
One solution to this climate catastrophe might be coursing through the pipes at Sublime Systems. Founded by two MIT battery scientists, the startup is developing an entirely new way to make cement. Instead of heating crushed-up rocks in lava-hot kilns, Sublime’s technology zaps them in water with electricity, kicking off chemical reactions that form the main ingredients in its cement.
Over the course of the past several years, the startup has gone from making batches of cement that could fit in the palm of your hand to starting up a pilot facility that can produce around 100 tons each year. While it’s still tiny compared with traditional cement plants, which can churn out a million tons or more annually, the pilot line represents the first crucial step to proving that electrochemistry can stand up to the challenge of producing one of the world’s most important building materials.
By the end of the decade, Sublime plans to have a full-scale manufacturing facility up and running that’s capable of producing a million tons of material each year….The cement industry pumps 2.6 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year.
More at this link.
On a different note, scientists believe that electrified cement could be used to turn homes into giant batteries, making energy cheaper and more plentiful, as is explained at this link.
But there are considerable challenges to applying such technology, as an article explains at this link.
Scientists recently came up with a substance that whitens teeth and also kills 94% of bacteria. Scientists have also come up with a treatment for alcoholism that reduces drinking by 90% among the lab monkeys it was tested on.
Artificial intelligence is now developing highly-effective antibodies to fight disease. Doctors are using artificial intelligence to detect cases of breast cancer more effectively in Hungary, enabling them to remove such cancers before they can metastasize and kill women.
Robotics is fueling other life-saving innovations. Doctors recently did the first robotic liver transplant in America. Robots can fit in small spaces in people’s bodies that a surgeon can’t reach without cutting through living tissue, or doing other collateral damage.
In other news, a mutant tomato could save harvests around the world. Farmers have found they can increase crop yields by using electrical stimulation on their crops.
