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The I-95 bridge collapsed because it was made with the wrong cement. So is our infrastructure. [1]

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Date: 2023-06-14

We are about to rebuild it with the same flawed product.

So a gasoline tanker burned under a bridge on I-95 near Philadelphia last week, and it brought the whole bridge down, paralyzing the main East-Coast artery from NYC all the way to Miami for the next several months. I don’t think that bridge would have collapsed had it been built with geopolymer cements.

Our infrastructure is crumbling because it was built with Portland cement, OPC, a flawed product that is always full of water, which bursts into steam that blows it apart in a fire. OPC freezes and thaws and expands and contracts with temperature and moisture content, and inevitably it cracks. The cracks let water reach the rebar, which rusts, expands, and breaks the concrete apart, sometimes in as little as 40 years: the collapse of the Surfside Condominium in Miami (June 24, 2021) was predictable--and therefore negligent homicide. OPC is not waterproof, and as water moves through it it supports the growth of molds and mildew. It slowly dissolves in weak carbonic acid—rainwater. And as the cost of energy increases, it is becoming ridiculously expensive. It is a sucky product, and the only reason we use it is that it comprises planned obsolescence and welfare for the OPC manufacturers—largest single industry on the planet—and construction—largest conglomerate—industry, and they can afford lotsa lobbyists.

The other problem with OPC is that it was 8 percent of climate change a few years ago. According to Columbia University's Earth Institute, the annual growth rate of cement production is 2.5% www.kapre.com/.... : 2.5 percent growth doubles in 28 years. But if we rebuild, and China and India and the rest of the developing world “modernize,” with the stuff—China already uses 40 times as much cement per year as we do—the 3.6 billion metric tons/year we currently produce will go through the roof. At .86 ton of CO2 per ton of OPC (average; some plants are worse than 1:1), that’s 3.1 gigatons of avoidable CO2 dumped into the atmo this year by that industry alone. If we’d done all of that construction with the right geopolymer cements, we might have sequestered almost that much CO2 instead.

OPC is a bunch of calcium carbonate compounds—limestone, seashell—and it is made by “calcining,” pyrolyzing, cooking, the carbon out of limestone and burning it to CO2, while burning fossil gas to provide the heat. Geopolymer cements, GPCs, are aluminosilicates, essentially glass, far more resistant to chemicals, acids, than limestone. Some of them suck lots of CO2 out of the atmosphere and bond with it, turning it to stone forever, as they cure. You don’t have to cook anything to make them; you grind coal fly ash, steel mill slag, glass, granite, basalt, olivine, serpentine, pumice, volcanic ash—about ¾ of the earth’s surface—to the right consistency. A lot of mine tailings might be ready to use. And tailings, fly ash, and slag are toxic wastes. Turning them into cement sequesters those toxins. Don’tchya love it when solving one problem solves several others? www.geopolymertech.com www.geopolymer.org/…

It takes 90 or 95 percent less energy to produce GPCs as it does to make OPC, and the carbon lost to atmosphere is similarly less—and could be zero, using clean energy and equipment made from Boston Metal’s clean steel www.bostonmetal.com. And remember, some GPCs—Ferrock™ (www.pbs.org/…) is an example—draw down atmospheric carbon as they set and cure. The plant to make GPCs is essentially a rock crusher; it, too, should cost a tiny fraction as much as an OPC plant. All of this could save us taxpayers megabucks as we rebuild our bridges and buildings. The only reason the OPC industry won’t reinvest is that planned obsolescence thing, greed. I do not understand why you would help destroy the planet so you might sell the cement to rebuild a bridge in 60 years when you won’t be alive in 60 years to sell the cement to rebuild the damn bridge. If these people cared that much about leaving their progeny a future, the first thing they’d leave ‘em is a habitable planet.

Some GPCs are refractory—they don’t burn, they don’t melt, they don’t care—to at least 2700 °F. They expel the mixing water as they set, and are bone dry inside—no water to blow them apart in a fire, or to freeze and thaw and expand and contract—and they have a far lower thermal coefficient of expansion than OPC (they expand and contract less with temperature), so they don’t crack like OPC. They are more alkaline and so “passivate” rebar better. Most are several times as strong, in both compression and in tension, as OPC, and surprisingly flexible. They are much more compatible with cellulose—hempcrete, wood chip and sawdust aggregate, bamboo reinforcing—than OPC, and protect wood from rot and fire. Mold and mildew don’t grow on them. And they are enough like Roman cement, and the mortars that still hold parts of ancient Jericho together, that they, too, might last thousands of years. Something to leave our grandchildren besides debt, and maybe fascism?

And if one of those GPCs, Blue Crete, is the superinsulation—up to R-17.5 per inch—that its developer, Dr. Robert Panitz of Pompano Beach, Fl, says it is, I can show you how to build fireproof, tornado proof homes, your refuge, not your pyre or your tomb, in a catastrophe. Bullet resistant, if you like. Never ever need paint. Sanitary, mold and mildew resistant, warm comfortable super energy efficient homes that don’t conduct electricity—a major safety factor—that might still be sheltering your great great great great great great great great great great great grandkids x thousand years from now, for half, maybe 1/3, the cost of current construction methods. Less labor, too. My old union would hire a hit on me. Anybody else interested?

www.bluecrete.com www.bluecrete.com/… science4solutions.net

And just google the entities I mentioned. There’s lotsa journalism on all of them, and it’s good reading. Honest.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/6/14/2175397/-The-I-95-bridge-collapsed-because-it-was-made-with-the-wrong-cement-So-is-our-infrastructure

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