Boral Limited, in partnership with industry players and researchers, is developing a lower carbon concrete product using Australian calcined clay as an alternative supplementary cementitious material (SCM).
The innovative solution aims to ensure the ongoing supply of Boral’s lower carbon concrete offering, given the abundance of clay and the global supply of blast furnace slag and fly ash is limited and expected to decline.
Boral has partnered with the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Transport for NSW, and environmental technology company Calix, as part of a project supported by SmartCrete CRC, an independent cooperative research centre (CRC) that brings together collaborators from industry, research and government to ensure the viability of Australia’s concrete infrastructure.
The two-year project, co-funded through the Commonwealth’s CRC Program, aims to further demonstrate the technical feasibility of calcined clay concrete for use in Australian buildings and infrastructure.
The partners – comprising suppliers, university researchers, asset owners and providers, will work on accelerated lab testing and field trials as part of the validation stage.
A first batch of Boral clay has been successfully calcined by Calix’s unique renewably powered electric calcination technology, demonstrating the potential of the approach to produce a low carbon intensity SCM.
The project follows extensive research and development at the UTS Boral Centre for Sustainable Building carried out over the past three years whereby the suitability of a number of Australian clay sources were identified.
Boral CEO & managing director, Vik Bansal, said the company is continuously improving and diversifying its lower carbon concrete offering by identifying new ways to reduce the cementitious intensity of their products.
“The strong demand and take-up of our lower carbon concrete range can be seen across many major Australian buildings and construction projects which use our Envisia and Envirocrete products,” he said.
“We are excited about the next generation of work being done in lower carbon concrete and Boral’s ability to support the decarbonisation of Australia’s building and infrastructure for many years to come.”
Boral’s head of sustainability, Dr Ali Nezhad, said that given the abundance of clay in Australia, using Australian calcined clay was a natural decision for Boral.
“We have been impressed with the work done to date and initial testing in this project is promising. We look forward to the building and construction industry in Australia embracing these new innovations,” he said.