Can anyone point me to documentation about Solidia’s ready-mix product? I see an image for it in their web site gallery and it’s mentioned in this article.
I could have sworn I saw a video about it but I can’t find it.
Sue
Hi Sue,
I can probably help you out here, or at least can connect you with the right people if I can’t answer your questions directly. What sort of information are you looking for?
M@
Thanks Matt. I understand that Solidia folks are busy trying to wrap up a round of funding right now. I am just looking for general information about the status of their ready-mix offering. I saw a picture of Solidia ready-mix sidewalk on their web site gallery, and an article that alludes to their ready-mix r&d (see below) and I am looking for any more info on this.
Sue
“Solidia has qualified as a Portland cement substitute for ready-mix cement (which represents about 70 percent of the cement market) in a number of U.S. research labs, according to DeCristofaro, who said the company’s science has been proven and practiced on an industrial scale in North American and Europe.”
https://builtin.com/founders-entrepreneurship-raleigh-durham/startups-saving-world-concrete
Solidia is actually a product and a process and doesn’t behave in the same way as ready mixed concrete. With Solidia it is a different manufacturing process, but based on similar raw materials as the cement we have been using for decades. This different manufacturing process lowers the carbon emissions when compared to traditional cement, but this is just part of the reduced impact of Solidia.
The second piece is that it does not hydrate like cement. To explain, I first need to discuss a little about how traditional cement works. This is a chemical reaction called hydration to create a gel that binds materials together, i.e. the glue that binds aggregates. Solidia does not harden through a hydration process, rather, it requires a high CO2 atmosphere to harden.
This has a couple of impacts, first is that the curing needs to occur in an enclosed system to maintain the high CO2 concentration, so the focus has been on using the material in systems such as paving stones, which is what is shown in the article image, and other precast applications. Secondly, once the curing process is complete, the resutling concrete is at it’s final strength and doesn’t continue to gain strength over time like traditional concrete.
That said, work is ongoing to develop solutions that behave in similar ways to the ready mixed concrete that we are used to.
I hope this helps, and feel free to continue the discussion if you want some more details.
Thanks for the info. Sounds like their ready-mix solution is still in the works. Though they have a picture of it here, with the caption “Solidia Ready-Mix Sidewalk”.
https://www.solidiatech.com/media.html
I’m getting an update from their Senior Scientist as the last update I had from him was in March and I’ll post here again with the current status of the cast-in-place ready mix solution.
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Just saw this video of Solidia’s CEO at 4 hrs 30 min in.
My main takeaway: “Our new technology for ready-mix is in testing in infrastructure applications. We’ve pushed our research even further to develop a concrete that may become a carbon sink. That means that we will consume more CO2 than is emitted during cement production. Since we can’t use CO2 gas at a construction site, we knew we had to deliver it to our concrete in either a solid or liquid form, so we’ve been partnering with companies that are taking waste CO2 and transforming it into a useful family of chemicals like oxylic acid or citric acid, the same one you use in orange juice. When that acid reacts with our cement, we can pack in as much as four times more carbon in the concrete, making it carbon negative.”
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