DUCON-Concrete
Sustainability

DUCON concrete - the more climate-friendly concrete.

Concrete is the most important building material of our time. Around 30,000,000 tons are used worldwide every year. Only with it can modern architecture be realized in its current form. It offers a wide range of possibilities for breathtaking bridges, houses, skyscrapers, roof structures and floor surfaces, as well as for industrial buildings. The problem: Concrete is not considered a particularly environmentally friendly building material, primarily because of its energy-intensive production.

Traditional concrete production is one of the most emission-intensive industrial processes

Concrete contains cement, which is responsible for over 98 percent of concrete's CO₂ emissions and of which around 5,000,000,000 tons are produced worldwide every year. For its production, the starting material limestone is burned to quicklime in rotary kilns at 1,450 degrees Celsius using extremely high levels of energy. Even if the kilns are now heated not only with coal but also with car tires, waste oil, used solvents or animal meal, this only improves the climate balance imperceptibly. In addition, further CO₂ is released during the burning process due to the deacidification of the limestone, and the grinding process and transport also generate additional CO₂ emissions.

The CO₂-equivalent emissions of cement are three times higher than those of aviation: 590 kg/t.

So what to do? Close our eyes and carry on like this? Work is already underway on alternative cement production methods using hydrogen and more climate-friendly processes. On the concrete side, modified compositions, the possibility of recarobonation, and alternative construction methods with graded systems and slimmer components are being developed. However, all these processes are not yet mature enough.

The result:

• lower material usage of steel, cement, sand and gravel
  
• less transport and installation effort
• slimmer substructures
• greater durability

Comparison of DUCON and C20/25 in 4-point bending test

Comparison of component volumes of DUCON and C20/25 in 4-point bending test

DUCON concrete has a significantly lower component volume and thus a significantly lower weight with at least the same performance as reinforced concrete.

Another advantage: components made of DUCON concrete are recyclable and can thus be easily processed into high-quality recycled concrete with compressive strength C35/45 and consistency class F2.

In the spirit of circular economy

We also strive to achieve the highest possible recycling rate for our technology in the interests of circular economy. To this end, recycling tests were carried out with our micro-reinforced test specimens using a mobile crushing plant. The recycling process can be seen in the following video.

The output of the recycling process using a mobile crushing plant shows that DUCON® can be separated almost 100% into concrete and reinforcement. The fine fraction of the old concrete mortar can be reintroduced into the company's own product cycle. The other parts can be reused for alternative applications. This reduces the further extraction of primary resources and thus protects the environment.