CarbonCure Technology at Hillside Sustainable Living

Hillside Center for Sustainable Living is excited to share a more environmentally friendly concrete called CarbonCure. We hope to integrate CarbonCure into our structural concrete systems at Hillside over the next year. 

CarbonCure is a CO2 injection system that infuses frozen waste CO2 into the wet concrete before it is cast in place on a construction site or a precast manufacturing facility. Much of our world is made up of concrete, and this technology is a beautiful innovation to reduce its environmental impact.

Did you know that cement is responsible for 7% of global CO2 emissions? Did you know that there is a difference between concrete and cement? Concrete is the second most consumed substance on the planet after water. It is a mixture of rocks, sand, water, and a substance called cement, which binds it together. Cement manufacturing and curing is a huge generator of global CO2 emissions (1 lb of cement produces 1 lb of C02 emissions!). Unfortunately, without cement, concrete would have no strength and put worldwide infrastructure goals out of reach.  Because there is no viable substitute for concrete yet, we at Hillside believe that raising awareness of lower CO2 concrete is a better global carbon reduction strategy than avoiding concrete.    

CarbonCure captures waste CO2 from industrial processes, compresses it at high pressures, and then discharges it as CO2 ice crystals into the wet mix of sandstone and cement at the ready-mix plant.  The CO2 melts and then makes chemical bonds within the cement as it hardens, sequestering it forever. The CO2 interaction with the cement increases the concrete's compressive strength, allowing concrete producers to use five percent less cement in their mixtures without compromising strength.  

Companies pay to use CarbonCure technology but save money by using less of their most expensive ingredient, cement. We know that to make an environmental impact, you must make business sense. CarbonCure makes the grade, so, at Hillside, our engineers are currently working with regional ready-mix plants to procure CarbonCure for inclusion in concrete elements.