Green360 carbon-reducing cement substitute meets real-world trials

Green360 Technologies has taken a major step towards commercialisation of its highly-reactive “Eco-Clay metakaolin” product, delivering about 60 tonnes of the product to two commercial concrete batching plants operated by a national concrete supplier in Melbourne for full-scale trials in low-carbon concrete mixes.

Green360’s Eco-Clay is derived from the company’s settlement ponds and tailings at its kaolin mining operations in Victoria, effectively transforming waste into a valuable construction material in a textbook example of circular economy innovation.

The product is able to partially replace traditional carbon emitting cement powder in the manufacturing of concrete and its source from waste dumps from an unrelated mining operation makes it particularly carbon friendly when it comes to its secondary use – the manufacturing of concrete.

The trial material was delivered using standard pneumatic road-going tanker trucks to concrete batching plants in Springvale and Footscray, two suburbs separated by about 30 kilometres in the Melbourne metropolitan area.

Springvale is located in the city’s southeast, while Footscray is an inner-city suburb situated 5km west of Melbourne’s CBD.

The two deliveries – transported as if they were ordinary cement or other supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) – prove that Eco-Clay is compatible with Australia’s existing bulk dry powder logistics, storage silos and batching infrastructure.

The company’s logistical and operational milestone follows shortly after independent verification by the University of Melbourne last month that the product meets Australian Standard AS 3582.4:2022 for Supplementary Cementitious Materials – Pozzolans.

Pozzolans are siliceous or silico-aluminous materials that react with calcium hydroxide in the presence of water to form cementitious compounds, adding strength and durability to concrete.

They can be natural, like the volcanic pozzolanic ash famously employed by the Romans for centuries, or artificial, such as furnace fly ash.

The successful production and commercial bulk delivery of Eco-Clay is a critical step forward for the Company. We have created a product that stands against the best metakaolin’s in the world and had it verified by Melbourne University.

The university’s verification also confirmed that Eco-Clay’s amorphous content exceeds 88% – placing it among the highest-reactivity metakaolins available globally and well above typical industry benchmarks.

The high reactivity of the company’s metakaolin product allows replacement of up to 40% of ordinary Portland cement in concrete formulations while maintaining and sometimes even improving concrete strength and durability.

The substitution delivers significant reduction in carbon emissions that are typically associated with production of Portland cement, which requires calcining of limestone at high-temperatures in the range of 1350 to 1450oC.

The considerable carbon emissions of the calcining process have a dual source, namely from combustion of the fuel required to generate the required calcining furnace temperatures and also from the driving off of appreciable quantities of carbon dioxide in the conversion of limestone (CaCO3) to calcium oxide (CaO), the principal raw base product for cement.

Successful pneumatic tanker conveyance and plant acceptance remove two of the final practical barriers to widespread adoption of a partial substitution of Green360’s product in conventional Portland cement.

Concrete producers have historically been reluctant to trial new supplementary cementitious materials unless they can be handled with existing traditional cement equipment and logistics – a requirement that Eco-Clay has now satisfied.

Key next steps include commercial-scale testing of cement and concrete performance parameters at the two plants. Subject to positive results, discussions are expected to advance towards formal supply agreements and joint development of low-carbon concrete mixes.

Separately, the company’s Green360–PERMAcast Joint Venture will also shortly begin commercial-scale trials, blending Eco-Clay with industrial by-products for low-cost, low-carbon precast concrete products, while the company also pursues toll-treating arrangements to accelerate market supply.

PERMAcast is a large Perth-based pre-cast concrete manufacturer that is partnering with Green360, providing a real-world manufacturing and commercial testing environment for Green360’s low-carbon cement.

With laboratory-proven tech now being translated into real-world bulk handling and delivery, Green360 is clearing critical hurdles on its path from proven technology to routine commercial use across Australia’s concrete sector.

If it can produce and process the tailings waste streams required to build its cement replacement product at commercial quantities and the testing regime stacks up, Green360 just might have a greener alternative to a product that is sold in such monstrous quantities that it is responsible for something like 8 per cent of the world’s carbon emissions.

To put that number in some perspective, if Portland Cement was a country, it would be the third largest emitter in the world, surpassed only by the mega economies of China and the USA – a nice market to sell a commercial product into!

Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@wanews.com.au