1 | ashmann

14 de July de 2009 to ● 7:35 pm

Texas) — A Plano, Texas-based company says it has figured out how to use rice husks in the production of carbon-neutral concrete.

By cooking the husks in a low-oxygen environment, researchers with ChK Group, Inc. say they can reduce the material to nearly pure silica, which can replace carbon intensive cement in concrete mixes.

Other materials, such as coal fly ash, have been used to replace cement in a greener concrete, but rice husks are an especially promising byproduct in China and India where rice and concrete consumption are especially high.

The researchers are currently building a pilot operation to test and refine the process.

Source: http://www.reuters.com

2 | ashmann

14 de July de 2009 to ● 8:01 pm

Lincolnshire, U.K.) — A new use for old chip fat could help cut emissions produced from building roads in Lincolnshire.

Engineer Helen Bailey, 25, of Leicester-based Aggregate Industries, has developed a process replacing bitumen – which is normally used in road surfaces to “glue” asphalt together, with waste vegetable oil.

Now Lincolnshire has been chosen as the first county in the country to use the product.

Ms Bailey said the use of 1.25 million tons of bitumen in the asphalt industry each year comes at a “significant environmental and economic cost” as it uses imported crude oil.

“Bitumen is currently essential to making asphalt, but it is expensive and uses up valuable crude oil supplies,” she said.

“I wanted to find an alternative with the same key properties as bitumen in the asphalt mix, using a waste product readily available in the UK.

“I was delighted to find that the waste fat produced by cooking one of the nation’s favourite dishes can be used to hold together our roads.”

The new system was developed at Aggregates Industries Express Asphalt testing centre in Bowbridge Road, Newark.

It is now awaiting a patent and will shortly be tested on road surfacing projects across Lincolnshire.

It could end up replacing Bitumen, which is regularly used across the country.

It is often imported in large quantities to the UK.

If the new ‘chip fat’ substance replaces it, the carbon footprint of the road-building industry could be dramatically reduced.

Source: http://www.thisislincolnshire.co.uk

3 | ashmann

17 de July de 2009 to ● 4:46 am

(HONG KONG )– Two years ago, U.S. private equity powerhouse Kohlberg Kravis Roberts took the plunge in China–making its first mainland investment by plowing $112 million into Tianrui Cement, one of China’s top 10 cement manufacturers. It was hailed as an innovative private equity deal, with the World Bank’s investment arm, JP Morgan and some Chinese banks all on board, ultimately providing both more equity and $335 million in long-term loans to Tianrui.

Within a year and a half, however, Tianrui had become a headache for KKR and other investors. Their relationship with the cement company’s founder, Henan entrepreneur Li Liufa, soured as the shareholders fought over questionable management practices, according to a former executive at the company and others familiar with the industry in China. At one point, Tianrui Cement’s chief financial officer, who was recruited by KKR, was badly beaten in an unexplained incident.

Today, the business picture is murky. Unlisted Tianrui maintains it is prospering and KKR, which took a 43.2% stake in Tianrui at the time of the deal disclosed in September 2007, won’t elaborate, but others say problems remain. In any case, this is a story of challenges that private equity investors can face as they seek to improve governance at and introduce outside management to Chinese family enterprises, even ones of considerable size and stature. It also shows that while a deal might be structured to protect minority interests, what follows may still be bumpy.

(In reporting this story, Forbes tried to contact or access first-hand sources by various means. In nearly all cases, with the significant exception of the former executive who requested not to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter, we were rebuffed. Also, formal information on such private-sector activity is not available in China. We pieced many details together from a combination of informed parties.)

According to the former Tianrui executive and the industry followers, the outside investors and the founder squabbled intensely last year over concerns that Li Liufa may have commingled up to tens of millions of dollars from the cement operation with funds from his other businesses. The $1 billion-in-revenue Tianrui Group, which is chaired by Li Liufa and controlled by him and his family, includes casting for freight-car trucks, aluminum, gas, power and tourism businesses. Tianrui Cement’s own outside management team also is said to have objected to the practice.

Eventually Tianrui Cement’s top management, including the company’s chairman and chief executive, Xiao Jiaxiang, was run out by Li Liufa, who installed closer associates, the sources say. The influence of the investors, including KKR which currently owns 38.9% of the cement maker, has eroded as a result, according to these accounts. KKR declined to comment for this article.

The writing is on the wall for any execs with dual nationality. Just look at the Rio Tinto failed deal and alleged spying of “state secrets”. Be warned

Tianrui Cement, in response to faxed questions from Forbes about management strife and ownership practices, said “we do not comment on rumors or speculations about the company,” but maintained: “Since formation of the joint venture in early 2007, we have worked with our shareholders to achieve continued, rapid growth of the company.”

Matters came to a head in December when then-chief financial officer Chen Qi-an was beaten by three men on the streets outside the cement company’s compound in Ruzhou city. His laptop computer lay nearby as he was pummeled, and although his laptop was taken afterward, authorities at least initially discounted robbery because the assailants had asked the victim if he was “executive Chen” before they set on him, and did not take his wallet, Forbes was told.

Chen is said to have been hospitalized for a month, during which he was visited by officials from JP Morgan and the World Bank’s private-sector arm, the International Finance Corp. (IFC). Chen in his management role is said to have raised concern about Li Liufa’s financial practices, according to the former executive and another industry source. Chen, who is said to have been brought in by KKR, has since left Tianrui and declined to comment.

“We don’t want to see anyone beaten up. In the case you’re talking about, I’ve heard about this happening,” Michael Ipson, China and Mongolia manager for the IFC, said in an interview in June. “Without being able to say whether it was done by this person or that person, I don’t want to reach a conclusion that could be counterproductive to the company.” The IFC owns a 4% stake in Tianrui Cement.

“This is obviously a sensitive case and we’ll pay attention to it,” he added. JP Morgan, which was reported by the South China Morning Post as having invested $100 million through Tianrui Cement’s second round of financing in 2008, wouldn’t comment.

A local police record, if any, of Chen’s assault could not be confirmed by phone. Ruzhou is a remote city of about 1 million people in the central western part of Henan Province.

In May, a domestic publication ranked Li Liufa as Henan Province’s richest person, with a net worth of 3.7 billion yuan ($541 million). He has been a member of the National People’s Congress, China’s legislative body, since 2003. Li Liufa could not be reached by Forbes.

In the latter part of 2008, Tianrui Cement’s chairman and chief executive Xiao Jiaxiang, an industry veteran, shocked some in the sector by saying he would leave his post. More than 10 other ranking outside managers have departed Tianrui Cement as well.

“Behind this explosive development, Tianrui Group’s internal governance issues have gradually been revealed,” the industry newsletter Zhongguo Shuini Wang, or China Cement Net, said in a report on Feb 16. Tianrui’s relationship with KKR could be “at an impasse, and may break down,” it noted.

Xiao, now vice general manager of Hong Kong-listed China National Building Material, told Forbes he left for “personal reasons” and declined to comment further.

Li Liufa’s pushing out of Xiao was “purely the individual behavior of a boss of a private enterprise with Chinese characteristics–decision making based on will instead of on relevant standards and processes,” Li Minghua, chief executive of Shuini Shangqing Wang, or CemBusiness, another trade magazine, wrote in a November 2008 opinion piece that circulated widely in the industry.

Xiao’s departure dealt a “loss to the infant stages of developing a modern management system” at Tianrui, and will prompt business partners to “reevaluate their collaboration with Tianrui,” the commentary said.

Xiao had helped reel in the 2007 KKR investment, a coup for Tianrui Cement that let it expand at a lightning pace in Henan, where it is the biggest cement maker, and into Dalian city in Liaoning Province as well. Tianrui Cement is one of 12 national cement producers selected by the Chinese government in 2006 for preferential policy support from local governments and banks, giving it special access to land and loans. Beijing has been eager to consolidate the cement industry, which remains fragmented with many private family-controlled enterprises.

Foreign investors have been eager to tap into China’s cement industry, in anticipation of ambitious infrastructure and construction projects through the country. Last year, Goldman Sachs ( GS – news – people ) bought a 25% stake in Zhejiang Province’s cement maker Hongshi Group, also privately held, for $120 million.

With China now in the midst of a public-construction boom as a result of $586 billion in stimulus measures unveiled by Beijing in November, Tianrui Cement will reap benefits. “Business fundamentals and momentum remain strong for Tianrui today,” the company’s statement to Forbes reads. “Operating profit has grown nearly 60% every year; production capacity has more than tripled to 27 million tons; and market share has significantly increased in our core markets.

“In addition, the company has also made three strategic acquisitions. This performance is a result of the continued support from the local as well as three foreign shareholders and of the collaborative efforts by the management team and all employees,” Tianrui Cement’s statement said.

Tianrui Cement’s 2008 revenue was 3.36 billion yuan ($491.5 million), according to KKR’s annual report. The company’s profit is not disclosed.

But after weathering China’s economic slowdown, Tianrui Cement still faces challenging market conditions. With all the cement plants currently under construction, Henan Province will have “severe” excess production capacity of over 120 million tons, Li Liufa told a cement industry conference held in Anhui in June.

Tianrui Cement’s plan to build a 12,000-ton cement production line in Xingyang, Henan, which would be the largest one in China, was delayed last year, China Cement Net noted in its report.

And in 2009, Tianrui Cement is without its former management team.

By April 2008, Li Liufa was seen as running Tianrui Cement like his own fiefdom, say industry sources. A board meeting scheduled for that month in Henan was not held because Li did not show up, and this upset the head of KKR’s China team, David Haifeng Liu, according to the former executive. But the global financial crisis erupted soon thereafter, taking KKR’s attention away from Tianrui Cement’s management issues, he says.

Liu declined, through KKR, to talk to Forbes.

Li Heping, a long-time associate of Li Liufa, was brought in to replace Xiao as Tianrui Cement’s chairman. The two Li’s–unrelated–had served on the board of the Hong Kong-listed Sanmenxia Tianyuan Aluminum, another subsidiary of Tianrui Group. Guo Zhiwei was elevated within the company to replace Xiao as chief executive.

Private equity investors have long professed goals of not just bringing capital but also global best practices to their target companies. KKR’s long-term goals for Tianrui Cement are to establish performance indicators, strengthen financial management and attract talent and technology, David Liu told the respected business magazine Caijing at the time of the 2007 deal.

“The biggest challenge for family-controlled companies is to say, when do we bring in professional management and start to change this or that,” the IFC’s Ipson told Forbes. “People who are successful believe in their abilities. We’ve dealt with other entrepreneurs whom we’ve had disagreements with. Over time, they have realized what we’re saying is accurate and changed their management approach. … That didn’t happen overnight. That didn’t happen easily.”

“I think if every one of our companies had perfect management, there’d be no role for us,” he added.

Another major challenge for private equity is if the “local entrepreneur has multiple business interests and you’re only going into one of them,” says a private-equity investor who has worked for over a decade in China. That kind of partnership risks an eventual misalignment of interests among the shareholders. The complex Tianrui Cement deal, with multiple outside parties, only raised these hurdles higher.

KKR’s deal team has had a strong track record in China’s cement industry. David Liu and his associates that work on Tianrui, according to the buyout firm’s Web site, came from Morgan Stanley ( MS – news – people ), where they handled a string of headline-grabbing investments in cement makers Anhui Conch and Shanshui Cement, both of which are listed in Hong Kong.

But Anhui Conch and Shanshui are state-owned enterprises with a long history and relatively standardized practices, securities analysts note.

Li Liufa founded Tianrui Cement in 1993, building it up from a small foundry through acquisitions, according to a KKR statement in 2007. The $335 million in dollar- and yuan-denominated loans from the banking syndicate, which was led by JPMorgan Chase ( JPM – news – people ) and included China Construction Bank and Citic Bank, helped Tianrui Cement halve its borrowing costs, Caijing reported at the time. KKR’s contract with Tianrui Cement had stipulated protection of minority investors as well as a “long-term incentive package for management,” according to the report.

For now, “KKR and the Li Liufa family are still trying to rescue the deal. Both sides don’t want to give up as that would incur significant costs. It’ll depend on who retreats a step or concedes more,” says one follower of the Chinese cement industry. Tianrui Group is said to control three seats on the seven-member Tianrui Cement board as of 2008, while another three seats are said to belong to the foreign shareholders. An independent seat belongs to Wang Yanmou, an industry veteran in his 70s. He also could not be reached by Forbes.

Meanwhile, KKR is pursuing more China deals. In June, it disclosed a $150 million investment in Chinese milk supplier Ma Anshan Modern Farming, another closely held enterprise. That marked the buyout firm’s second announced investment in China.

By: Tina Wang

SOURCE: http://www.forbes.com

4 | ashmann

17 de July de 2009 to ● 7:43 am

copper slag, a by-product obtained during smelting and refining of copper, was for many years treated as waste with no further use thereafter. Holcim Singapore found a novel way of encapsulating copper slag into concrete, reducing the use of natural sand in cement production and avoiding landfilling that used to be the common way of disposing this “waste”.

It was all started in early 2007 when Indonesia banned sand exports over environmental concerns. The subsequent acute aggregate shortage hit the construction industry hard as sand and granite are concrete’s primary ingredients.

Holcim Singapore took up the challenge to turn this difficult time in construction into an opportunity to innovate. The Product Development and Technical Services department was assigned to carry out the task of evaluating the use of one such available waste material called Washed Copper Slag (WCS) to partially replace the concreting sand. Holcim Singapore took initiatives to study and implement the potential on the use of recycled materials into ready-mix concrete.

Further use for copper slag

Originally imported from Japan, copper slag was used as an abrasive material for removing rust and marine deposits from ships through sandblasting. After repetitive recycling and reuse, the copper slag lost its original abrasive property and with no good use thereafter and was disposed in landfills. However, there were environmental concerns about the leaching of heavy metals into soil and ground-water, and hence were dumped in landfill sites in the distant island of Pulau Semakau for decades which again had very little room for further landfills. Holcim Singapore found a novel way of encapsulating this waste into concrete thereby not only removing the environmental concern but also finding a value-added and meaningful substitute for natural sand. Copper slag is similar to sand in grading and its hard, non-absorptive, non-reactive properties make it an ideal fine filler material for concrete after it is suitably washed to remove all impurities.

Even though WCS produces no dust, has low crystalline silica (less than 0.1%) making it an environmentally friendly product, its usage was not explored to its full potential due to the conservative nature of the industry.

Conserving Resources

Together with Singapore’s Building and Construction Authority, Holcim had successfully developed “Holcim Green”, which is concrete using recycled granite from demolition debris and replacing part of the sand with WCS. The material has received Singapore’s “green label”, an award from Singapore Environmental Council honoring products that are environmentally friendly and conserve resources.

Today, the use of WCS as a substitute for sand in the production of concrete is widespread in Singapore with the majority of the Ready Mixed Concrete companies using it. The new application of WCS as a partial substitute for sand also triggered the change of the Singapore’s Aggregates standards which allows both natural and non-natural aggregates including recycled aggregates in concrete, thereby opening the door to the more use of recycled/waste materials in concrete production.

5 | ashmann

17 de July de 2009 to ● 8:22 am

(ScienceDaily) — Dr. Houssam Toutanji, a professor at The University of Alabama in Huntsville, has published an article that will demonstrate a concept of creating concrete structures on the lunar surface without the use of water.

Traditional concrete comprises a binder — cement and water — mixed with aggregates. While some parts of the Moon may have water, that resource may be more valuable for astronaut’s consumption rather than building structures.

His research shows that those astronauts can turn to a new type of waterless concrete that uses lunar soil as the aggregate and sulfur as a binding agent.

Toutanji, who is also chair of the civil and environmental engineering department at UAHuntsville, has spent years studying the characteristics of cementitious materials, said he anticipates concrete to play a major role in constructing facilities on the lunar surface to survive the harsh environment on the Moon’s surface.

NASA is searching for a means to use resources that are available from the surface of the moon, according to Toutanji.

“The difficulty of transporting materials from Earth will place a premium on resourcefulness and ingenuity,” he said.

Toutanji was co-author of the article along with Dr. Richard N. Grugel, a geological engineer at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.

6 | ashmann

17 de July de 2009 to ● 8:27 am

(New Zealand) — Entries for the second annual Concrete3 Sustainability Award are now open and those eligible for the award include anyone who can demonstrate sustainability in the in the production or use of concrete in the building and construction industry.

The Award is sponsored by the Cement and Concrete Association of New Zealand (CCANZ). CCANZ chief executive Rob Gaimster says the award recognises and celebrates industry innovation as well as a real commitment towards achieving sustainability.

“We strongly encourage entries from architects, designers, engineers, contractors and their clients, as well as others involved with the design and construction of buildings and infrastructure,” Mr Gaimster says.
“It is vital we reward those companies and individuals who are pioneering concrete sustainability. They are leading our industry in its goal to achieve a sustainable built environment for New Zealand.”

The 2008 Concrete3 Sustainability Award was awarded to Mainzeal Property and Construction for Project Century, Lion Nathan’s new integrated manufacturing and warehousing facility in East Tamaki, which uses concrete filled with waste glass aggregate.

“Winning the award was a huge honour for Mainzeal. It is certainly in line with what we are trying to achieve with respect to our strategic business objectives, as well as being timely in the sense that sustainability is now a genuine business concern,” Mainzeal’s Sustainability Manager, Ross Copland says.
The judging panel for the 2009 award includes Professor Koji Sakai, Kagawa University, Japan; Pieter Burghout, chief executive of BRANZ; Charles Willmot, technical director of the Institution of Professional Engineers New Zealand (IPENZ); and Rob Gaimster, chief executive of CCANZ.

The judges will assess concrete-based products, projects, programmes or initiatives that have taken into account the environmental, economic and/or social aspects of sustainable development. They will specifically consider sustainability as it relates to lean production and reduced waste, management of natural resources, minimised energy usage, protection against pollution, respect for people, and set performance targets.

Entries for the award are due by Friday, August 28, and the winner will be announced at a presentation at the Concrete Industry Conference in October 2009.

Concrete3 is an industry-wide initiative designed to raise awareness of cement and concrete’s contribution to New Zealand’s sustainable development across economic, social and environmental areas.

For more information or to enter, go to http://www.sustainableconcrete.org.nz.

7 | ashmann

18 de July de 2009 to ● 7:01 am

(Sydney, Australia) — A by-product from coal-fired power stations can be made into a stronger and much safer concrete with far less carbon dioxide emissions, researchers have found.

They say this technology could “revolutionise the world’s building and construction industries” and they hope to move the technology towards a large-scale trial and commercialisation.

Materials scientist William Rickard and his colleagues from Curtin University, in Perth, used waste materials called ‘fly ash’ to create the concrete.

Fireproof concrete may save lives

“The main benefit of using fly ash polymer cements is that they maintain their strength up to 1,200ºC whereas traditional cements start losing their strengths at about 600ºC … In the event of a fire, a building using traditional cement can lose its strength and collapse.

Buildings with fly ash concrete would have a much better chance of surviving a fire, Rickard says. Even coating exposed structural steel with it would reduce the heat that goes through the steel and prevent combustion.

Each year there are approximately 100 fatalities and about 3,000 injuries from structural fires in Australia alone.

Rickard says another application is full replacement with fly ash cement in the building of tunnels. “In Europe there have been cases of tunnels collapsing during a fire … this technology has the potential to save lives there.”

Cutting the world’s carbon

Over 600 million tonnes of fly ash are produced globally each year, according to Rickard, as a by-product from coal-fired power stations. He says his new cement will “turn a waste product into something useful, stopping it just being dumped.”

As well recycling, the fly ash cement will be good for the environment because it releases up to 80% less carbon dioxide than standard cement.

It could make a big different on a global scale. “[Currently] 5–8% of the world’s carbon emissions come from the manufacture of traditional cement,” says Rickard.

Other cements

Manufacture of traditional cement known as Portland cement or OPC requires that limestone be burnt into lime. But this new cement is different: “It’s an inorganic polymer with a different chemistry than traditional cements because it is not calcium based,” says Rickard.

“Production of one tonne of Portland cement has been found to release approximately one tonne of carbon dioxide,” says Rickard. Rickard’s cement requires less energy and the chemical reaction doesn’t release carbon dioxide.

Adding fly ash in concrete is not a new concept. Rickard says the use of fly ash in geopolymer cement is based on a different concept. “In Portland cement fly ash is purely there as a filler, whereas in geopolymer cement fly ash is a critical component because it’s where the strength comes from,” says Rickard.

By: Amy Callaghan

Source: http://www.cosmosmagazine.com

8 | ashmann

18 de July de 2009 to ● 7:17 pm

Biofuel is any fuel that is derived from biomass – recently living organisms or their metabolic byproducts, such as manure from cows. It is a renewable energy source, unlike other natural resources such as petroleum, coal, and nuclear fuels.

Agricultural products specifically grown for use as biofuels include corn and soybeans, primarily in the United States; as well as flaxseed and rapeseed, primarily in Europe; sugar cane in Brazil and palm oil in South-East Asia. Biodegradable outputs from industry, agriculture, forestry, and households can also be used to produce bioenergy; examples include straw, timber, manure, rice husks, sewage, biodegradable waste, and food leftovers. These feedstocks are converted into biogas through anaerobic digestion. Biomass used as fuel often consists of underutilized types, like chaff and animal waste.

The idea of using biofuels from renewable sources is attractive as biofuels could help
reduce greenhouse gas emissions and our dependency on fossil fuels. However, a new
study, which looked at the full life cycle of biofuels, shows that, depending on the type
and source of biofuel, the benefits and environmental impacts can vary considerably. The
results highlight differences that could help inform policymakers considering tax-breaks
for renewable fuels.

Biofuels are currently the most important form of renewable energy in road transportation, but the debate over their environmental impact is ongoing. Some argue that when cultivation, including deforestation and soil acidification, is taken into account, biofuels consume more energy than they produce.

Today, biofuels provide about 1% of global transport fuel. Already, they are causing
serious harm to the climate, to communities, food sovereignty and food security and to
biodiversity. Most biofuels are agrofuels – made from crops and trees grown specifically
for that purpose, such as sugar cane, palm oil, soya, jatropha or maize. Agrofuel expansion means more intensive agriculture and thus more agro-chemicals (including synthetic fertilizers). It also means more destruction of natural ecosystems, which play a vital role in regulating the climate, and the displacement of millions of small farmers, pastoralists and indigenous peoples.

9 | ashmann

19 de July de 2009 to ● 3:06 am

(ScienceDaily) — Conventional means of internal reinforcement for concrete member in buildings involve steel bars. Yet for structures that function in harsh environments like coastal regions, or for structures that support sensitive equipment, such as magnetic resonance imaging units; the use of fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) is emerging as a valuable option, due to its natural resistance to corrosion, its high strength, light weight, transparency to electrical and magnetic fields and ease of manufacturing and installment.

However, little has been done to study the performance of concrete columns reinforced with FRP bars. Currently the American Concrete Institute, a nonprofit technical and educational society and one of the world’s leading authorities on concrete technology, does not address the use of FRP bars for reinforcement in columns, but welcomes additional relevant research and experimental evidence.

Full-scale experiments are critical to validate the technology, and to produce compelling evidence that underpins rational design methodologies. To address this need, the National Science Foundation (NSF) Industry/University Cooperative Research Center “Repair of Buildings and Bridges with Composites” (RB2C) at the University of Miami (UM) examined the behavior of concrete (RC) columns internally reinforced with glass FRP (GFRP) bars on full-scale specimens for the first time ever.

The new study demonstrates that the behavior of GFRP-RC columns was very similar to that of the conventional steel counterpart. The results of this project will be presented by Antonio De Luca, graduate student at the University of Miami College of Engineering, during the 9th International Symposium on Fiber Reinforced Polymer Reinforcement for Concrete Structures, in Sydney Australia, on July 13-15.
“The outcomes of our study provide a compelling case to modify existing design guidelines and allow for limited use of GFRP bars in columns, particularly when corrosion resistance or electromagnetic transparency is sought,” De Luca said.
Other important findings of this project include:

The GFRP vertical bars are not detrimental for the concrete column performance.
The contribution of the GFRP to the column capacity is very small, if the amount of longitudinal reinforcement is used. Therefore, the presence of the GFRP bars can be neglected in the computation of the ultimate column capacity.

Difference in manufacturer of the GFRP bars does not affect the performance when bars are of the same quality.

Use of GFRP bars as compression reinforcement may be allowed when design is for vertical loads only.

The next stage of the study is meant to demonstrate that specimen scale does not affect GFRP-RC column specimen performance; and to investigate the behavior of GFRP-RC column specimens subjected to compressive load applied with a small eccentricity.

SOURCE: http://www.sciencedaily.com

10 | ashmann

3 de August de 2009 to ● 9:49 am

When you hear the innovation that’s taking place… “new concrete materials that last longer and are waterproofed from the inside out, and that can mean that bridges and roads and buildings can last 20 or 30 years longer than using conventional concrete”… that gets you excited about the future.” President Obama, Whitehouse, July 2, 2009

At a recent Rose Garden press conference, President Obama underlined the need to use waterproof concrete technology – an innovation that can extend the life of concrete roads, bridges and buildings by 20 to 30 years, beneficial to shovel-ready projects such as those in his economic stimulus plan.

(East Setauket, New York) — In his recent Clean Energy press conference, President Obama held praise for new innovations such as “new concrete materials that last longer and are waterproofed from the inside out, and that can mean that bridges and roads and buildings can last 20 or 30 years longer than using conventional concrete.” (See White House press release at http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-After-Meeting-With-Energy-CEOs/)

Sound farfetched? “Not in the least” says Mr. Robert Revera, CEO of ICS Penetron International, “our products have been used on countless projects in over 60 countries around the globe since we began offering our unique crystalline waterproofing technology in the 1970s. However, as relevant as this technology is under normal circumstances, it seems even more so today as we invest in our infrastructure through the Stimulus Programs and look for ways to maximize the return on tax payers’ money.”

Penetron’s crystalline concrete waterproofing achieves this in several ways. Concrete is essentially a hard sponge, absorbing water and all the impurities and aggressive chemicals that enter with it. These chemicals attack the reinforcing steel and eventually destroy the concrete from within. Penetron, whether added as an admixture to fresh concrete or applied topically to existing concrete, grows an insoluble crystalline structure inside the natural pores of the concrete preventing water from entering in the first place.

“What’s even more exciting about Penetron,” says Mr. Revera, “is that in the presence of moisture it will continue to grow these crystals even in hairline cracks and allow the concrete to heal itself.”

“Once the concrete has been made waterproofed,” adds Mr. Christopher Chen, North American Sales & Marketing Director, “a host of additional problems generally brought on by water is now eliminated. Penetron takes care of problems such as freeze-thaw and scaling damages seen in colder climates and corrosion from deicing salts or seawater.”

“The President has certainly done his homework in identifying concrete waterproofing technology as a Green, innovative way of extending the life of concrete structures,” adds Mr. Chen. “Architects and engineers love it because it meets their most demanding design constraints while satisfying Green Technology and Clean Energy requirements. Contractors love it because it saves time on the schedule and their time is money. Owners and developers love it because it saves them money, lowers maintenance costs and adds life to their buildings.”

“While our customers, engineers, contractors, owners and indeed, our projects stand as testimony to our company and products,” continues Mr. Chen,” we hope the President’s endorsement of waterproofed concrete technology will strike a chord with those industry professionals who have yet to experience the benefits of Penetron.”

ICS Penetron International, Ltd. is an innovator and leading manufacturer of integral crystalline waterproofing and repair products for concrete with a manufacturing and service network that spans more than 60 countries

11 | ashmann

5 de August de 2009 to ● 7:47 am

(CLEVELAND, Ohio) — The Admixture Systems business of BASF Construction Chemicals today announced the launch of the RheoTEC™ series of workability-retaining admixtures. The revolutionary new technology behind RheoTEC admixtures is only available from BASF and provides a distinct mechanism for achieving flexible amounts of slump retention and workability control without retardation. The result is consistent concrete that helps concrete producers achieve more cost-effective and efficient operations.

The RheoTEC admixtures work in combination with Glenium® high-range water-reducing admixtures, Polyheed® mid-range water-reducing admixtures and Pozzolith® water-reducing admixtures. Glenium, Polyheed or Pozzolith admixtures are dosed to achieve the initial workability, and RheoTEC admixtures provide workability retention, ensuring consistency from batching to placement.

“Water-reducing technologies provide excellent workability,” said Joseph Daczko, Product Manager, BASF. “However, concrete producers have continuously asked for a technology that could retain workability for longer periods of time and under various adverse conditions. Re-tempering with water can lead to potential changes in performance characteristics. With the RheoTEC workability-retaining admixtures, we offer a new chemistry that helps concrete producers improve quality and reduce rejected loads.”

12 | ashmann

13 de August de 2009 to ● 5:11 pm

(Abu Dhabi city) — The first hints of the project are visible. A white wall stretches through the desert, like a chalk line on a dusty playing field. A bus with darkened windows stirs a low cloud, ferrying workers past a cluster of steel cranes, two portable drilling rigs, and a stand of concrete columns sprouting rust-colored rebar. A tall wire fence guards rows of solar panels mounted on concrete pads.

The construction is the start of a vast experiment, an attempt to create the world’s first car-free, zero-carbon-dioxide-emissions, zero-waste city. Due to be completed in 2016, the city is the centerpiece of the Masdar Initiative, a $15 billion investment by the government of Abu Dhabi, which is part of the United Arab Emirates. The new development, being built on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi city, will run almost entirely on energy from the sun and will use just 20 percent as much power as a conventional city of similar size. Garbage will be sorted and recycled or used for compost; sewage will be processed into fuel. Concrete columns will lift the city seven meters off the ground, creating space underneath for a network of automated electric transports that will replace cars. Planners predict that the development will attract 1,500 clean-tech businesses, ranging from large international corporations to startups, and–eventually–some 50,000 residents.

The city will be an oasis of renewable energy in a country of five million, made rich by oil, that consumes the most natural resources per capita in the world. Seen one way, it’s just the latest ostentatious project in a country that’s been defined by them. Indeed, the UAE is already home to the world’s tallest building and an enormous indoor ski facility that features a 200-meter-long black-diamond slope. Real-estate developers have dredged coral and sand from the sea floor, piling it up in the Persian Gulf to create islands in the shape of palm trees and a map of the world.

Yet many experts are optimistic that the city can become a test bed for new approaches to the engineering and architectural problems involved in creating environmentally sustainable cities. Although architects have already designed and builders constructed many small zero-emissions residences and commercial buildings, projects involving large, multi-use commercial buildings have fallen short of expectations, using too much energy or failing to generate enough. Part of the problem is the growing complexity that comes with scale, says J. Michael McQuade, senior vice president of science and technology at United Technologies in Hartford, CT; today’s design software hasn’t been able to handle it. But Masdar City, itself developed with the help of extensive modeling, will be wired from the beginning to collect data that could prove valuable for developing better models. That information could make future zero-emissions cities cheaper and easier to build.

And the development is meant to make money, not just introduce new technology. “We want Masdar City to be profitable, not just a sunk cost,” said Khaled Awad, the project’s director of property development, at a huge real-estate exhibition in Dubai last fall. “If it is not profitable as a real-estate development, it is not sustainable.” Yet if it is, it may be replicable.

“If environmental engineers, by gaining experience from building this wild city, become much more productive at building the next city, this starts to move from being science fiction to something Houston would adopt,” says Matthew Kahn, a professor of economics at the University of California, Los Angeles. Gil Friend, CEO of Natural Logic, a sustainable-design company based in Berkeley, CA, agrees. “I see Masdar on the one hand as a playground for the rich,” he says, “and on the other hand as an R&D opportunity to deploy and test out technology that, if things go well, will show up in other cities.”

Of course, much of what’s learned from Masdar won’t apply outside the incredibly hot and sunny coast of the Persian Gulf. A site in Germany, which wouldn’t get as much sunlight, couldn’t rely as heavily on solar energy. A site in San Francisco might not need air conditioning, making information about advanced cooling systems less relevant. But if the project reaches its environmental goals, it will at the very least show that such cities can be built. “People say, ‘Gee, that would be great. That would be a good idea, but obviously it’s not possible,’” Friend says. “Once you can point at something, it takes away a lot of those arguments.”

Breaking Ground
The Masdar Initiative is part of an ambitious plan to transform a resource-based economy–the third-largest exporter of oil in the world–into one based on knowledge and expertise. The name Masdar comes from the Arabic word for “source,” and the plan is to make Abu Dhabi the Silicon Valley of alternative energy: a source of talent, patents, and startups in the very industry that could one day challenge the supremacy of oil. It’s a daunting challenge to say the least, especially for a region that, according to Awad, “hasn’t been known for innovation for a thousand years.”

The city was conceived as a tax-free zone meant to attract clean-technology companies, largely from other countries. (The first tenant, General Electric, plans to build a 4,000-square-meter ­facility.) The Masdar Institute, the first part of the city to be built, is meant to be what Stanford University is to Silicon Valley. Developed in collaboration with MIT, which organized the curriculum and is helping to select and train the faculty, the institute will be a gradu­ate research school, offering master’s degrees and, eventually, PhDs. Its first class of 100 students will start courses this fall. And if graduates develop promising ideas and start companies, they can look to the Masdar Initiative for capital. Of the $15 billion the government has set aside so far for the initiative, only about $4 billion is designated as seed money for building the city’s infrastructure. (The city is expected to cost a total of $22 billion, the rest to come from outside investors.) The remaining $11 billion is earmarked for a range of investments; projects so far include a solar-cell factory in Germany, an offshore wind farm in the United Kingdom, and efforts to reduce carbon emissions in Nigeria.

Still, the city is the most visible part of the initiative. It is by far the largest zero-emissions and zero-waste project in the world, according to several experts. (A larger “eco-city” development near Shanghai doesn’t aspire to zero emissions.) Efforts elsewhere have so far been limited to small to moderate-sized buildings and small communities, like a series of efficient row houses for 250 people in Wallington, South London. One of the most ambitious zero-emissions buildings to date, the Lewis Center at Oberlin College in Ohio, has 1,263 square meters of floor space. Masdar City will cover six square kilometers. Its headquarters alone, which will include offices as well as retail and cultural space, will occupy an 89,500-square-meter structure.

A detailed master plan for the city is complete, as are plans for the first buildings: the Masdar Institute and the headquarters. The city–which will include apartments and laboratories, but also factories, movie theaters, cafés, schools, fire stations, and so on–is intended to generate as much electricity as it uses. Its water will be recycled to save the energy costs of desalination. Vacuum tubes under the city will transport garbage to a central location, where it will be sorted, and as much as possible will be recycled. Trash that can’t be recycled will be converted to energy through a gasification process and the leftovers incorporated into building materials. Sewage will be treated and some of it processed into a dry renewable fuel for generating electricity. The transportation system will include a light-rail line linking the development to downtown Abu Dhabi and the airport, as well as a personal rapid-transit (PRT) system with stations throughout the city. The PRT, a system of automated electric vehicles, will connect people to the rail line or deliver them to parking garages outside the city.

As is typical for zero-emissions projects to date, the city will need to rely in part on fossil fuels–both during construction and for power at night, when its solar panels won’t be producing any electricity. The goal is actually best described as zero net carbon dioxide emissions: to reach the zero-emissions target, the developers will turn to a system of carbon credits. As the city is being built, a 10-megawatt array of solar panels will deliver power to nearby Abu Dhabi city, reducing demand for electricity from local natural-gas-fired power plants during the day. The carbon emissions saved will offset the emissions produced at night, when Masdar draws power from those same natural-gas plants. This solar array, and additional panels that will be installed as construction continues and electricity demand grows, will also offset the carbon emissions from construction equipment, from the processes used to make building materials such as concrete, and even from consultants’ flights into Abu Dhabi from cities around the world.

So far, the developers have been accounting for “just about everything,” says Pooran Desai, cofounder of BioRegional, a British company that helped develop the zero-emissions project in London and has consulted for Masdar. “I don’t know of any other project that has been as thorough in terms of its carbon monitoring,” says Desai. “They’re hunting down every molecule of carbon dioxide.”

The Master Plan
Dubai is a sprawling, car-dominated city about an hour’s drive from Abu Dhabi city. Skyscrapers stretch along a 12-lane highway, Sheikh Zayed Road. Sunlight heats the unshaded areas to 46 °C in the summer. But there are a few places in Dubai where a person can walk outdoors in the middle of the day without risking heatstroke, and all are artifacts of the past. There are the covered souks, shaded marketplaces. And there is a historic district called the Bastakiya, which preserves some of the architecture that protected locals from the heat and humidity before the arrival of air conditioning. The houses and shops have thick walls made of dried coral and gypsum that absorb heat during the day, releasing it slowly at night. Because the buildings are packed closely together, they shade both each other and the narrow passages between them. The passages funnel breezes, cooling the buildings further.

When Gerard Evenden, a senior partner at the British firm ­Foster and Partners, began to make the master plan for Masdar City, he looked to such traditional designs for ways to save energy. Since the city will depend almost entirely on electricity from solar power, which is five times the price of electricity from the local grid, the city needs to be roughly five times as energy efficient as competing developments nearby.

One of the first things Evenden did was subtract cars: with the highways gone, the city’s buildings could be separated by passages just 7 to 12 meters wide, close enough to shade each other yet far enough apart to let in indirect light. That’s a cheap way to reduce the need for not only air conditioning but electric lighting, the largest drain on electricity in commercial buildings. Insulation is cheap, too: in the Masdar Institute, Evenden plans to use 30-­centimeter-thick insulation to keep out the heat. He’s also incorporating “skins” of copper foil that reflect light and conduct heat away from the buildings. The foil will be protected from the desert dust by a self-cleaning Teflon-like plastic. To reduce the need for energy-intensive desalination, Evenden’s design will cut water consumption by 75 percent through recycling, low-flow fixtures, and waterless urinals.

A small fraction of the energy that’s still needed to run the city will come from waste-based fuel and perhaps geothermal power. The rest will come from the sun–but not all of it through expensive photovoltaics, which convert sunlight into electricity. Much cheaper devices that concentrate heat from the sun will heat water and run a type of air conditioner called an absorption chiller. (This is the same kind of technology that is used now in propane-­powered refrigerators.)

In theory, it should all work. But in practice, even much less ambitious projects have failed. Oberlin College’s Lewis Center features many of the same elements of energy-efficient design: thick insulation, natural ventilation with heat exchangers, plenty of windows to offset the need for electric lighting, and heat pumps rather than conventional furnaces. A 60-kilowatt array of solar panels on its roof was supposed to produce as much electricity over the course of a year as the building consumes. Yet the building initially used too much energy, and the solar panels were not adequate. To achieve zero net energy, the college had to install an extra solar array nearby, more than tripling the total power production. It added over a million dollars to an already expensive building, estimates John Scofield, a physics professor at Oberlin who has published a detailed analysis of the building’s performance.

In general, architects find that predicting how energy-efficient systems will interact gets much harder as buildings get bigger. In buildings designed to take advantage of natural light, for example, designers can install sensors to automatically switch bulbs off when enough light comes in from outside. But lights turning on or off in one sensing zone may affect the sensors in another. In some buildings this has created a feedback loop that makes lights cycle on and off annoyingly.

Neighboring heating and cooling zones can also affect one another to create complex and unpredictable feedback loops, especially as the number of zones increases. United Technologies’ J. Michael McQuade recalls what happened when his company designed what was supposed to be an intelligent heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning management system for a new building in Paris. The system was designed to coördinate 3,000 different zones. “When that building was first put together, it was a significant energy consumer, and it took a revamp of the integrated control systems to get it right,” McQuade says.

If zero-emissions buildings are to be economical, Scofield says, the designs will have work from the start. “If you don’t get it right,” he says, pointing to the fiasco at Oberlin, “every correction you make is so much more costly than getting it right the first time.”

Personal Transit
Masdar City will be raised on concrete stilts to make room for a personal rapid-transit (PRT) system that will replace buses and trains with smaller vehicles designed for four people. Masdar’s planners expect the system to use less energy than conventional mass transit, and they say it will be more convenient, too.

In a PRT system, several small vehicles, often called pods, are kept waiting at each station. An individual or a small group boards one and selects a destination; the pod proceeds automatically to the destination without stopping. In a typical design, each ­vehicle resembles a battery-powered golf cart, only it’s completely enclosed and somewhat bigger–and it lacks a steering wheel. The vehicle follows a track, which is connected to stations by on-ramps and off-ramps, and a computer controls how the pods enter and exit the stations: the ramps allow individual pods to make stops while others continue along the main track at top speeds. Simulations suggest that the systems could run with as little as half a second between vehicles.

But although PRTs look promising, they haven’t caught on. That’s in part because an early PRT-like system built in the 1970s in Morgantown, WV, gave the idea a bad name, says Jerry Schneider, an emeritus professor of urban planning and civil engineering at the University of Washington in Seattle and a longtime advocate of PRTs. “People would get on the vehicles and they wouldn’t stop,” Schneider says of the system, a transit line with automated cars for about 20 people. Technology has improved since then, he says, but there hasn’t been a significant real-world demonstration of the updated systems.

Two demonstration programs are on the way. The first, which will transport passengers to a new terminal at Heathrow International Airport near London, will open later this year. Tests of that system are already under way. And the first stage of the system at Masdar City, to be built by the Dutch firm 2GetThere, is scheduled to be in place for the opening of the Masdar Institute this fall.

The Test Bed
Sameer Abu-Zaid isn’t breaking a sweat. It’s 39 °C with 74 percent humidity, but he says it’s a nice day–much cooler than the summer in Abu Dhabi, when temperatures can reach 49 °C. Abu-Zaid, who’s originally from Jordan and was most recently a manager at a semiconductor equipment manufacturer in Silicon Valley, will manage Masdar City’s power and distribution infrastructure. “All of these modules have been tested at the factories,” he says as he gives a tour of one of the first visible signs of the city, a test site where he’s putting 41 arrays of solar panels from various manufacturers through their paces. “But they have been tested under standard test conditions: 1,000 watts per meter squared, 25 °C. Nice air-conditioned space. It is totally different here.”

Dust from the desert quickly coats the panels, effectively dimming the light that reaches them. Abu-Zaid has learned that just four months of dust reduces the output of the solar arrays by more than 20 percent–information he’ll use to decide how often to wash the panels, balancing power loss against water consumption.

Another problem is the heat. Solar panels’ dark surfaces absorb sunlight, raising their temperature to as much as 80 °C. The heat affects some solar-cell technologies more than others. Some of the most efficient solar panels also produce less power when they get hot. Because of these trade-offs, it’s not obvious which panels will work best at the Masdar site, Abu-Zaid says. At the test plot, sensors track how much various panels heat up, how effective different cooling strategies are, and how power output changes with temperature, among other factors.

Such data gathering will continue as the city grows. Its designers and engineers will measure both energy consumption and energy production. They will track water consumption down to the individual fixture. At Masdar headquarters, designers may use RFID tags in security badges to gather information on the way ­people use water and energy. Such measurements will allow designers and engineers to compare the real performance of the city with the performance predicted by laboratory tests and simulations.

Reality Check
In the early 1960s, while the United States was rushing to put a man on the moon, electric fans and lights were still unheard-of in Abu Dhabi, according to Mohammed Al Fahim, a native of the emirate who has written a rare history of the place. That was not long after oil was discovered there, and well before the money started flowing. Al Fahim is from one of the wealthiest families in the area, yet both his sister and later his mother died because of a lack of basic health care. Now life expectancy in Abu Dhabi is virtually the same as in the United States. Before, the locals survived on water from brackish wells; now they drink fresh water from new desalination plants. The fragile and highly flammable palm-frond huts that housed most people have been replaced by gleaming glass-and-steel skyscrapers.

In many ways, the development of Abu Dhabi over the last few decades has reflected a frenetic effort to catch up with the developed world. Now, because of projects such as Masdar City, the emirate has a chance to race ahead. But in terms of urban development, it appears to be very much at a crossroads. In a few years, while the citizens of Masdar City will be pinching kilowatt-hours and using waterless urinals, go-carts will be screaming around a new track at a Ferrari theme park nearby, kids will be shrieking as they plummet down water slides at a new water park, and massive air conditioners will be roaring as they cool a new 700-store supermall. It’s all part of a 2,500-hectare development that will dwarf the 640-hectare Masdar City.

The two developments are competing visions for the future of Abu Dhabi. If the Masdar project doesn’t justify itself financially, it could indeed be just a green playground for the rich, an environmental theme park that is largely irrelevant for the development of sustainable technology on a broader scale. But if it is profitable, it could be a driving force for sustainable urban design. Then the oil-rich developers in the UAE and elsewhere might have a reason to build more green cities and skip constructing another ski slope in the desert. And developers worldwide will follow.

By: Kevin Bullis

13 | ashmann

1 de October de 2009 to ● 8:34 pm

nvesting in Renewable Technologies: Wind, Solar, Geotherm, Hydro, Biomass

Eventually renewable energies will dominate the world�s energy supply system. There is no real
alternative. Mankind cannot indefinitely continue to base its life on the consumption of finite
energy resources.

Today, the world�s energy supply is largely based on fossil fuels and nuclear power. These
sources of energy will not last forever and have proven to be contributors to our environmental
problems. The environmental impacts of energy use are not new but they are increasingly well
known; they range from deforestation to local and global pollution. In less than three centuries
since the industrial revolution, mankind has already burned roughly half of the fossil fuels that accumulated under the earth�s surface over hundreds of millions of years. Nuclear power is also based on a limited resource (uranium) and the use of nuclear power creates such incalculable
risks that nuclear power plants cannot be insured.

Renewable sources of energy are an essential part of an overall strategy of sustainable
development. They help reduce dependence of energy imports, thereby ensuring a sustainable
supply. Furthermore renewable energy sources can help improve the competitiveness of industries over the long run and have a positive impact on regional development and employment. Renewable energy technologies are suitable for off-grid services, serving those in remote areas of the world without requiring expensive and complicated grid infrastructure.

President Barack Obama has promised to spend $150 billion over the next 10 years developing
alternative energy. Promises like these leave a legacy for future generations to imitate. Clean
technology and green energy stocks have registered a new high as analysts anticipate a major boost from the president. The US election result has provided a much-needed encouragement at a critical time and that too for an industry which is still in its nascent phase. And this sector is threatened by the banking crisis and emerging economic recession. Reduction of carbon level, a cushion against fluctuating oil prices and creation of more jobs in economic slowdown would be the natural offshoots of this policy. “The country that figures out how to make cheaper energy that’s also clean, that country is going to win the economic competition of the future,” he said.

The roughly $800 billion stimulus package pending in Congress to revive the American economy includes billions of dollars in tax breaks and other financial incentives to boost the use of renewable energy.

This report on Investing in Renewable Technologies expands further and offers an in-depth analysis of all the renewable energies available today, from biofuels to geothermal. The report explores the benefits of each energy source, the growth drivers, challenges and barriers, economics of that energy, and much more. A complete analysis of all the renewable energies in use today, along with a section devoted to country analysis is also provided in the report.

14 | jcrdrill

25 de February de 2010 to ● 3:30 am

We Jcr wish to bring your focus. That Jcr into manufacture and exporters of Reverse Circulation Rigs, Dth Rigs, Refurbished Rigs, Tractor Mounted Rigs, Wagon drill rigs, Dth hammers and Bits Etc.

15 | ashmann

13 de March de 2010 to ● 3:27 am

keep me updated via ashmann@gmail.com