Scalable electrified cementitious materials production and recycling

Abstract

The production of Portland cement, the industry-standard cement, contributes ∼8% of global CO₂ emissions through fossil-fuel heating and decomposition of limestone (the primary cement raw material). Decarbonization, e.g., via direct electrification, of this 200-year-old liming routine is extremely challenging at the industry scale. We propose a scalable electrochemical decarbonization approach to circumvent the limestone use by switching to carbon-free calcium silicates from abundant minerals and recycled concrete. Water electrolysis produces protons and hydroxides to drive a pH gradient that accelerates Ca²⁺ ion leaching from calcium silicates and captures atmospheric CO₂ to form carbon-negative CaCO₃, which serves as the feedstock for cement manufacturing or as the carbon-mineralized product for cement substitution with permanent carbon storage. Value-added co-products amorphous silica and green H₂ further enhance cement performance and supplant fossil fuels for net-zero transition, respectively. The products readily meet present-day regulatory standards and demands, and the approach readily synergizes with business-as-usual cement manufacturing and concrete construction, which are important for upscaling and structural safety, promising ready reception by the public and industries. Blended Portland cement produced through our approach with carbon-negative CaCO₃ and silica demonstrates enhanced resilience and achieves carbon neutrality or negativity when incorporating storage or circulation of CO₂ from cement plant flue gas, respectively. This low-cost, electrochemical cement production approach using abundant ubiquitous raw materials enables electrification, transition to clean fuel, and decarbonization at a gigaton scale.