Ref. No.: Date: Question/Statement: Answer/Response 17 30 Dec 08 A student from Portugal asked the following questions 1.

Does Eco-Cement maintain the same dimensional stability and durability as regular cement? 2. Does the fire resistance of Eco-Cement match regular cements? 3. Please describe the thermal dilation behaviour of Eco-Cement? 1. The dimensional stability of Eco-Cements is at least as good as that of ordinary Portland cement concretes. 2. Hydrated magnesium carbonates such as nesquehonite are well known fire retardants. 3. The dimensional changes with temperature of Eco-Cements have not yet been characterised. 16 4 Mar 08 Making foamed concrete using Tec and Eco-Cement formulations Foaming using magnesia in the formulation works very well as there is usually enough CO2 in the air pockets to carbonate the magnesia whereby nesquehonite is formed. As nesquehonite looks a bit like a sea urchin it adds tremendous microstructural strength. The magnesium ion also imparts a pseudo elastic viscosity to the mix which helps hold the bubbles (see Rheological and Shrinkage Reduction Affects of Adding Reactive Magnesia to Concretes.) and we have not found that it interferes with any of the common foaming agents (See newsletter 29). The addition rate will depend on what else is in the mix and may be anywhere between 5 and 75% 15 22 July 07 Making Panels using TecEco Technology Could any TecEco cements be used to produce similar boards to those on the market today coming out of China that are made from either magnesium oxychloride or sulfate bonded fibre, perlite etc and coated in magnesium phosphate to render them waterproof?

If boards could be made with your cements could they be made thinner, say less than 25 mm (1 inch) and used to build an entire house without any additional structural support, like posts and beams? MgO compounds are highly suitable for the manufacture of composite boards in some ways but not others. A very important reason for their use is their ability to bond extremely well to just about anything. The reason for this strong bonding capacity is explained on our web site at http://www.tececo.com/technical.nanocomposites.php A downside of current state of the art magnesium oxysulfate or magneisum oxychloride boards is that they are not waterproof and this is why they generally have a magnesium phosphate coating. A good look at the atomic structure in the first graphic on the above web page should give the reader insight into why magnesium oxychlorides and sulfates have an innate weakness and that is that their layered structure tends to delaminate. Each ionically bonded layer is polar bonded to the one above and below and these polar bonds tend to break with strong polar solvents like water. On the other hand the same bonding capacity is why such "Sorel" type cements bond so well to many other materials. Magnesium phosphate, like most phosphates is insoluble and can therefore be used to waterproof magnesium oxychloride and sulfate panels. Like most magnesium compounds, because of the high charge density of magnesium, magnesium phophate has a differential charge density of the surface and will polar bond to other magnesium compounds such as oxychlroide or oxysulfate as well as other materials. The problem with phosphate is its high cost. At TecEco we believe we can do better with a Mg carbonate Ca silicate/aluminate system. It would have the advantage of lower cost, the bonding power of brucite and it's carbonates, the microstructural advantage of the carbonates, the sequestration advantage and the early strength advantage of the aluminates. All of course do not de-laminate so would not require the addition of a chemically precipitated phosphate layer which would be a further advantage given the shortage of phosphate globally. The answer to the second part of the question is to design with structure to overcome the innate lack of strength of such a thin board. With good design it should be possible to build to several stories. 14 6 July 07 Cooling Concrete using Liquid Nitrogen We are considering the use of liquid nitrogen to cool concrete in a fairly large project in Ecuador. There has not been any experience here with it, and our gas supplier has the equipment available, but we need to estimate nitrogen volume, we need to cool about 20 F, about 300 cy day, any suggestion?

Jose Arce in the forum at (www.aggregateRESEARCH.com) I totally agree with Ken Day. Fixing the problem is much better than mitigating it with liquid hydrogen. You will also find adding a small percentage of highly reactive MgO will not only reduce heat but make placement easier and improve long term strength through the release of chemical water for more complete hydration of PC. Water related shrinkage can also be reduced to nil and placement will be easier There is some precident for adding MgO for dams see Du, C. (2005). "A Review of Magnesium Oxide in Concrete - A serendipitous discovery leads to new concrete for dam construction." Concrete International (December 2005): 45 - 50. Note however that our contribution is that highly reactive material works much better and has other advantages. 13 20 Jun 07 Iron Oxide Has anyone heard about adding iron oxide to concrete for other purposes than coloring? Erez Sariel in the forum at (www.aggregateRESEARCH.com) I (John Harrison) call my self a geochemist and am the inventor of Tec and Eco-Cement. Geochemists are a bit broader minded than cement chemists! I have done some experimental work with iron oxide and my summation is that it will mop up chloride and sulfate increasing the resistance to corrosion of embedded steel reinforcing. Iron oxychloride and oxysulfate complexes would form. I have not studied US patent 5110360 but it came up in a search on the subject. It would be interesting to see if anybody has observed this increased durability when coloring iron oxides are used. 12 09 May 07 Evaporative Cooling Tell us how permecocrete or any other pervious pavement cools the surrounds through evaporation

According to Wikipedia "Evaporative cooling is a physical phenomenon in which evaporation of a liquid, typically into surrounding air, cools an object or a liquid in contact with it. Latent heat describes the amount of heat that is needed to evaporate the liquid; this heat comes from the liquid itself and the surrounding gas and surfaces." Molecules or atoms in a gaseous state have more energy than in a liquid or solid state. During evaporation this energy is extracted from the molecules remaining in the liquid and the surrounds as only higher energy molecules escape the liquid. Evaporative cooling is most effective if the humidity is low. 11 09 May 07 Differential Calcination of Dolomite Can dolomite be used to make Eco-Cement? Dolomite can be differentially calcined to give MgO plus CaCO3. Fluxes such as common salt make this easier. There are ways of separating MgO from dolomite but they involve a lot of processing and rely on the different solubilities of the two ions or differing reactions. 10 04 Jan 07 Renders for Straw Bale Construction Tell us about Eco-Cement renders for a straw bale home Eco-Cements are easy to use and ideal for straw bale construction for a number of reasons. Probably most important are the high workability, low sag and high stick that they have. The reasons for these advantageous properties are related to the rheological properties which are strongly influenced by the high surface charge on the magnesium ion and the particle packing of the material. It is also worth noting that with most aggregates a little magnesium oxide goes a long way with 1:2: 12-18 mixes not being uncommon. 9 04 Jan 07 Accelerators What accelerators work for Eco-Cement A range work. As to which work the best that is proprietary information. 8 04 Jan 07 Setting time Eco-Cement

Can the setting time for Eco-Cement be reduced as it can in Portland cement by using accelerators? The short answer is yes and most of the so called "accelerators" for PC work with MgO. Be wary however as many of them actually take part in reactions and have product that remains in the concrete. Sulfate for example forms magnesium oxy sulfate with magnesium. 7 04 Jan 07 Setting time Eco-Cement How does the setting time for Eco-Cement compare with portland cement? Somewhat slower with the rate depending on the proportion reactive magnesia and permeability. 6 18 Dec 06 Please provide samples Please send formulations so we can make Eco-Cement Unless the aggregates for Eco-Cement concretes are properly graded to allow CO2 access they will not strengthen. It follows that making good Eco-Cement concretes requires an understanding of particle packing, carbonation kinetics and a number of other issues as well as how to handle concrete. Making Eco-Cement concretes is something even the British Research Establishment (BRE) could not successfully achieve so we do recognise we have a problem. To resolve the issue we can currently provide advice and finances permitting will provide software to allow licensed users to formulate successful Eco-Cements. To become a licencee of TecEco it will be necessary to first approach us and if we agree to sign the Testing Agreement with Option to Licence and Confidentiality Agreement under legal on our web site. 5 18 June 06 Chemical Reactions ? Can Eco-Cement be a net carbon sink with the inclusion of organically derived fibres such as hemp? Absolutely - have a look at our LCA under tools on the web site and you will see that it can be a carbon sink even without.

4 18 June 06 Chemical Reactions ? Why do magnesium and calcium carbonate form more readily in permeable concretes made using TecEco Eco-Cements containing magnesia than in concretes containing only Portland cement (PC) as the binder? We think this is because the CSH lattice provides nucleation sites with access for carbonation. i.e an open structure on which nculeation can occur that provides access to CO2 . 3 18 June 06 Chemical Reactions ? Does a higher short term pH contribute to more affective pozzolanic and other silicification reactions, and, if so, why? Most reactions occur in solution as diffusion reaction mechanisms are hopelessly slow. The solubility and hence reactivity of silica is entirely dependent on the pH as any pH solubility curve would show. More silica is soluble at very low and very high pH. 2 18 June 06 Chemical Reactions ? What chemical reaction takes place between Eco-Cement and soil during the formation of Eco-Cement Mud Bricks? If you only knew how complex this question is. The reactions depend totally on the components in the soil and in particular the kinds of clays. Pozzolanic CSH, brucite and nesquehonite form. We also suspect magnesium look alike's to ettringite or hydrogarnet. 1 08 Dec 04 Cellulose Fibre Will your Eco-Cement etc.be able to use agricultural by-product like hemp and bagasse fibre and still be structural? Our cements are fundamentally suited for this purpose because they are low alkali (See newsletter 41)

Cement, a vast source of planet-warming carbon dioxide, could be transformed into a means of stripping the greenhouse gas from the atmosphere, thanks to an innovation from British engineers. The new environmentally friendly formulation means the cement industry could change from being a "significant emitter to a significant absorber of CO2," says Nikolaos Vlasopoulos, chief scientist at London-based Novacem, whose invention has garnered support and funding from industry and environmentalists. The new cement, which uses a different raw material, certainly has a vast potential market. Making the 2bn tonnes of cement used globally every year pumps out 5% of the world's CO2 emissions - more than the entire aviation industry. And the long-term trends are upwards: a recent report by the French bank Credit Agricole estimated that, by 2020, demand for cement will increase by 50% compared to today. Making traditional cement results in greenhouse gas emissions from two sources: it requires intense heat, and so a lot of energy to heat up the ovens that cook the raw material, such as limestone. That then releases further CO2 as it burns. But, until now, noone has found a large-scale way to tackle this fundamental problem. Novacem's cement, based on magnesium silicates, not only requires much less heating, it also absorbs large amounts of CO2 as it hardens, making it carbon negative. Set up by Vlasopoulos and his colleagues at Imperial College London, Novacem has already attracted the attention of major construction companies such as Rio Tinto Minerals, WSP Group and Laing O'Rourke, and investors including the Carbon Trust. The company has just started a 1.5m project funded by the government-backed Technology Strategy Board to build a pilot plant. If all goes well, Vlasopoulos expects to have Novacem products on the market within five years. Jonathan Essex, a civil engineer at the building consultancy Bioregional who also sits on the environment and sustainability panel for the Institution of Civil Engineers, welcomed Novacem's ideas to tackle the carbon impact of cement. "In the UK the climate bill commits us to reduce CO2 emissions, and every sector should play its part. The construction industry needs to take greater responsibility for its own environmental impact." Essex said that, if Novacem can make their cement at a competitive price, the next step could be to take even more CO2 emissions out of the process by using renewable energy to fire the furnaces. According to Novacem, its product can absorb, over its lifecycle, around 0.6 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of cement. This compares to carbon emissions of about 0.4 tonnes per of standard cement. "From that point of view, it's attractive," said Rachael Nutter, head of business incubators at the Carbon Trust. "The real challenge is what is the supply chain, who do you need to partner with to take it to market? The million-dollar question is what are the applications of it? If it ends up as decorative applications such as floor tiles, it's quite interesting but not as much as if you get into load-bearing structural stuff."

Previous attempts to make cement greener have included adding more aggregate to a concrete mixture, thereby using less cement. But this still does not tackle the problem of the carbon emissions from making the cement in the first place. Other systems use polymers in the mix, but none have yet made a significant impact on the market. A spokesperson for the British Cement Association expressed a sceptical note, saying that though there was much ongoing laboratory work on new types of cement, there were also problems. "The reality is that the geological availability, and global distribution, of suitable natural resources, coupled with the extensive validation needed to confirm fitness-forpurpose, make it highly unlikely that these cements will a be realistic alternative for volume building." Vlasopoulos responded that magnesium silicates are abundant worldwide, with 10,000 billion tonnes available, according to some estimates. "In addition, the production process of our cement is of a chemical nature, which means it can also utilise various industrial byproducts containing magnesium in its composition." He is confident the material will be strong enough for use in buildings but acknowledged that getting licenses to use it will take several years of testing.

Explainer: Ecofriendly vs traditional cement

Standard cement, also known as Portland cement, is made by heating limestone or clay to around 1,500C. The processing of the ingredients releases 0.8 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of cement. When it is eventually mixed with water for use in a building, each tonne of cement can absorb up to 0.4 tonnes of CO2, but that still leaves an overall carbon footprint per tonne of 0.4 tonnes. Novacem's cement, which has a patent pending on it, uses magnesium silicates which emit no CO2 when heated. Its production process also runs at much lower temperatures - around 650C. This leads to total CO2 emissions of up to 0.5 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of cement produced. But the Novacem cement formula absorb far more CO2 as it hardens - about 1.1 tonnes. So the overall carbon footprint is negative - ie the cement removes 0.6 tonnes of CO2 per tonne used. Blastfurnace slag is obtained as a by-product from iron making industry, it is then dried and ground into a fine powder. After that the powder is ready to be used for production of blastfurnace cement. Cement with admixture of blastfurnace slag possesses significantly improved properties such as durability, strength, lower permeability, lower hydration, more resistance to aggressive chemicals and it has proven to reduce costs for cement production. Blastfurnace cement has several advantages in respect to the environment. Firstly, it reduces CO2 and other toxic emissions, saves natural resources and reflects more sun energy, thus limiting the heat island effect.

Concrete made with blastfurnace cement can be used for the same purposes as normal Portland cement is usually used for. CEM III/A 42.5 N is applicable for all types of concrete. With its special properties it is suitable for extreme conditions, especially for construction of large projects as bridges, dams, roads, tunnels, see walls, ports, geo thermal facilities and others. Primarily it is preferred in the hot weather conditions due to low hydration and high resistance to sulfate and acid attack. Blastfurnace cement CEM III /A 42,5 N complies with the European Union norms, EN 197-1, CEM III/A 42,5 N and therefore we can guarantee the highest quality of our product.

Cement constituents
CEM III/A 42.5 N is more environmentally friendly material. Its usage proved to reduce costs, save raw materials and energy for production, and therefore protect our nature.

Hydration
Blastfurnace cement usage causes lower heat of hydration and conduces to pore-blocking effect. Cement paste has a less open hydrate structure and lower permeability in comparison to similar type of concrete containing Portland cement. This leads to high resistance to sulfates, chlorides, aggressive chemicals, acids attacks and penetration of corrosion-inducting chlorides.

Thermal cracking
Concrete with admixture of blastfurnace cement produces lower heat of hydration than Portland cement. It largely limits temperature rise in thick-sectioned pores, critical temperature differences and restricts early age thermal contraction cracking.

Alkali silica reaction

In most cases we can experience alkali silica reaction in concrete between the alkalis in cement paste and silica situated in most of the aggregates. Blastfurnace cement minimizes this risk by consuming alkalis in hydration process, reduces pore size, mobility of alkali and overall reduces alkali in a system.

Sulfate and acid attack

This attack happens when concrete comes to contact with sulfates in water. Sulfates from water react with C3A and Ca(OH)2, which are part of the cement and create expansive crystalline product, which when expanding cracks the concrete. The cracks allow more sulfates come into concrete and speed up process of cracking.

CEM III/A 42,5 N has higher resistance to sulfate attack since it contains less alumina, Ca(OH)2 and does not contain C3A, which means that it guarantees less penetration of sulfate ions.

Strength development
Slower gradual strength leads to better workability, higher compressive and flexural strength. The concrete using CEM III/A 42.5 N at early age has lower strength in comparison to concretes made with CEM I 42,5 R and CEM II/ B-S 42,5 R. But after 28 days CEM III/A 42,5 N strength overcomes strength of CEM I 42,5 R and almost acquires the same strength as the CEM II/ B-S 42,5 R.

Environmental advantages
According to Worldcement.com magazine, blastfurnace cement is marked as sustainable world building material, not only for perfect technical features, but also for consideration of environmental issues.

Reduction of CO2 and other toxic emissions

Typical production of CEM I results in emission of 930 kg of CO2/t of cement, where 50 % is from decarbonation of limestone, 40 % from consumption of fossil fuels and 10 % from electricity production used in the process. Ground granulated blastfurnace cement (GGBS) production normally releases 35 kg of CO2/t of GGBS. This presents less than 4 % from carbon release of normal cement production. GGBS also reduces other toxic emissions which cause various diseases and therefore it is also protecting our health.

Save natural resources

The production of each tone of normal cement requires 1,6 t of raw material. GGBS with using a blastfurnace slag avoids depletion of natural sources and makes the cement more sensitive to the environment.

Solar reflectance
The concrete that uses blastfurnace cement reflects more sun energy, reduces global warming and contributes to the reduction of heat island effect in urban areas. Studies in US confirm increased by 20 % sun reflection effect when blastfurnace cement is used. Subsequently it also reduces cost for lighting at night and makes the roads more visible and safer. Combination of environmental, economic and health advantages makes blastfurnace cement a unique material which is also confirmed by the leading sustainable building codes (LEED, BREEAM).