Award winning PhD project replaces cement with a much less carbon-heavy binder

While it looks like chocolate cake, a new way to use Danish clay as one of the key ingredients in the production of concrete is more likely a sustainable gem. 

The key is to replace the cement with a much less carbon-heavy binder, explains Marvin Glissner, industrial PhD student at DTU Sustain and COWI, who just won the DTU Sustain Innovation Award 2024 for his PhD project supported by the COWI Foundation and DTU.

In his award-winning project, he uses calcined clay, dug up from the Danish underground, in combination with a waste product from steel production. Together, this can replace cement in concrete production, significantly reducing the carbon footprint.

Watch Marvin explain more in the video below

Concrete is made of stone, sand, water and a binder – usually cement – and it is mainly because of cement production that concrete accounts for around 8 pct. of global carbon dioxide emissions. Every year, approximately 17 billion tonnes of concrete are used globally for buildings, roads and bridges, so decreasing the carbon footprint from this production is of huge importance.

“We want to help our customers reduce their climate impact through their projects. By using a more climate-friendly type of concrete containing local and abundant clay for their big infrastructure projects such as tunnels, bridges and marine structures, they will emit much less CO₂. We are happy to contribute to pulling the industry in a more sustainable direction for the climate, nature and people,” Carola Edvardsen, Technical Director at COWI and supervisor of the PhD project adds.