VATIS UPDATE Article

A team of researchers at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), the United States, has been working on a unique solution that may help eliminate these sources of greenhouse gases. Their plan would be to create a closed-loop process: capturing carbon from power plant smokestacks and using it to create a new building material – CO2NCRETE – that would be fabricated using 3D printers. That’s ‘upcycling’. “What this technology does is take something that we have viewed as a nuisance – carbon dioxide (CO2) that’s emitted from smokestacks – and turn it into something valuable,” said J.R. DeShazo, professor at the UCLA.

Thus far, the new construction material has been produced only at a lab scale, using 3-D printers to shape it into tiny cones. “We have proof of concept that we can do this. But we need to begin the process of increasing the volume of material and then think about how to pilot it commercially. It’s one thing to prove these technologies in the laboratory. It’s another to take them out into the field and see how they work under real-world conditions,” added DeShazo. This technology could change the economic incentives associated with these power plants in their operations and turn the smokestack flue gas into a resource countries can use, to build up their cities, extend their road systems.