Substantial global carbon uptake by cement carbonation

Xi, Fengming, Davis, Steven J., Ciais, Philippe, Crawford-Brown, Douglas, Guan, Dabo, Pade, Claus, Shi, Tiemao, Syddall, Mark, Lv, Jie, Ji, Lanzhu, Bing, Longfei, Wang, Jiaoyue, Wei, Wei, Yang, Keun-Hyeok, Lagerblad, Björn, Galan, Isabel, Andrade, Carmen, Zhang, Ying and Liu, Zhu (2016) Substantial global carbon uptake by cement carbonation. Nature Geoscience, 9 (12). pp. 880-883. ISSN 1752-0894

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Abstract

Calcination of carbonate rocks during the manufacture of cement produced 5% of global CO2 emissions from all industrial process and fossil-fuel combustion in 20131, 2. Considerable attention has been paid to quantifying these industrial process emissions from cement production2, 3, but the natural reversal of the process—carbonation—has received little attention in carbon cycle studies. Here, we use new and existing data on cement materials during cement service life, demolition, and secondary use of concrete waste to estimate regional and global CO2 uptake between 1930 and 2013 using an analytical model describing carbonation chemistry. We find that carbonation of cement materials over their life cycle represents a large and growing net sink of CO2, increasing from 0.10 GtC yr−1 in 1998 to 0.25 GtC yr−1 in 2013. In total, we estimate that a cumulative amount of 4.5 GtC has been sequestered in carbonating cement materials from 1930 to 2013, offsetting 43% of the CO2 emissions from production of cement over the same period, not including emissions associated with fossil use during cement production. We conclude that carbonation of cement products represents a substantial carbon sink that is not currently considered in emissions inventories1, 3, 4.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	carbon cycle,climate-change mitigation,environmental impact,sdg 13 - climate action ,/dk/atira/pure/sustainabledevelopmentgoals/climate_action
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Global Development (formerly School of International Development)
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Centres > Water Security Research Centre
Related URLs:	http://www.nature.com/doifinder/10.1038/...
Depositing User:	Pure Connector
Date Deposited:	09 Dec 2016 00:07
Last Modified:	21 Oct 2022 08:31
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/61678
DOI:	10.1038/ngeo2840

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