I thought asphalt was the ground material with the most give other than dirt, but scientists overseas have been working on cement with some "green" properties; carbon absorber properties to be exact.
Novacem, a fresh new startup company has actually concocted a cement that eats up carbon as it hardens! Novacem's revolutionary technology is based on magnesium silicates rather than limestone (calcium carbonate) as is used in traditional Portland cement.
The company has raised 1 million pounds ($1.7 million) to fund its work, underscoring the growing interest in eco-friendly construction ventures.
Novacem, a spin-out from Imperial College London, is one of a number of young companies tapping new technologies to reduce the cement industry's notoriously large carbon footprint.
Stuart Evans, Chairman of Novacem, said: "We are delighted to welcome our new shareholders. They will help us position the company as a dominant provider of carbon negative cement to the construction industry. We are assembling a world-class team and these funds will help us grow the team, complete an initial pilot plant before the end of 2009 and accelerate development and commercialisation."
Apparently, I am completely clueless because when I saw the release about the first carbon free water I had to re-read the headline. I didn't realize carbon had anything to do with water.
Through a state of the art water purification process, NIKA is a clean, fresh tasting water bottled in California with additional planned sites located throughout the U.S. to reduce transport and associated carbon emissions. Currently, NIKA is sold in case quantities for home and business delivery at nikawater.org but is also planning to partner with core retailers who believe and support its mission to provide clean drinking water and safe sanitation.
NIKA Water earned Carbonfund.org's CarbonFree Product Certification after going through a rigorous life-cycle assessment (LCA). The CarbonFree Certified water is carbon neutral as NIKA is offsetting carbon emissions associated with NIKA Water's manufacturing, distribution and consumption, including disposal. NIKA has also pledged that for every bottle of NIKA Water sold, the company will ensure that another plastic bottle is taken out of the environment and recycled. To do this, NIKA is working with schools and universities around the U.S. to create plastic bottle buy-back programs where NIKA pays the sponsoring school a small fee for every plastic bottle they collect and recycle.
The offsetting by NIKA is done quarterly based on actual sales and supports Carbonfund.org's Return to Forest reforestation project in southwestern Nicaragua.
The United Nations estimates that 1.1 billion people in the world lack access to safe water and 2.5 billion people lack access to safe sanitation. It is estimated that 4,500 people die per day from waterborne diseases and causes and 90 percent of these deaths are children under the age of five. Furthermore, within the next fifty years, the world population is expected to increase by 40 to 50 percent. This population growth, coupled with industrialization, urbanization and global warming will result in increasing demand for clean water, which NIKA believes could potentially eclipse the demand for oil.
One of the ideas was to Trap CO2 in Carbon Scrubbers...
Further intrigued am I.
Researchers at Columbia University say that soon they may have a working carbon scrubber which could take one ton of CO2 out of the air per day.
Which immediately made me wonder where they would then put the CO2. To which I found a response from the Columbia University researchers. "Klaus Lackner, a physicist at Columbia University in New York, and his colleagues have a few ideas, which they outlined in their patent application: the scrubber could be connected to greenhouses, where the CO2 would boost plant growth; or use it to grow algae, which could be used for fertilizer, food or fuel." It seems these folks have the answers.
The problem is that this scrubber costs $200,000 to make. And we all know how much money is floating around these days, or lack-there-of rather.
This particular machine is up for the $25K prize to be won at the Virgin Earth Challenge.
In other carbon related news, the city of Philadelphia is launching a new Carbon Offset Website. The site was built by The Energy Coordinating Agency which is a private, non-profit corporation dedicated to ensuring that low and moderate income people have access to safe, affordable and reliable sources of energy and water.
Just how porous is cement? 
