DETOCS

Increasing the use of supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) is one of the main pathways to decarbonizing cement production – itself the primary challenge when considering the sustainability of concrete. These materials replace a fraction of the clinker in cement: as clinker production represents the largest source of carbon emissions in cement, reducing the amount used thus lowers the carbon footprint of cement.

The use of SCMs is not new: industrial byproducts such as fly ash, calcined clay, and blast furnace slag have been added to cement for decades to reduce the cost of production. But their use must increase significantly if decarbonization goals are to be achieved. The ultimate goal in DETOCS is to help reduce the clinker factor of cement from about 70% today to 40% by 2030.

Increasing the use of SCMs in cement production is a complicated initiative. Achieving the targeted reduction in clinker factor will not only require the rapid scaling-up in the quantity of SCMs used, but also the use of novel SCMs as the supply of traditional materials becomes constrained. However, cement chemistry is complex: changing both the amount and type of SCMs may impact the performance of cement and, ultimately, concrete. This has traditionally limited the use of SCMs in some applications in the construction sector.

Developing new digital tools and models may hold the answer

The DETOCS Project aims to help solve some of these issues. It proposes a new approach to rapidly increasing the use of SCMs in existing cement production facilities. Workstreams will focus on exploiting the latest innovations in digital tools to predict and control the quality of cement and concrete blends with high amounts of SCMS compared to today’s standards. The project ultimately aims to lay the scientific foundations to create knowledge and new models to study the production of high-quality SCMs and their impact on low-carbon cement and concrete mixes.

The project brings together leading scientific expertise, interdisciplinary knowledge, engineering solutions, and real-world process data. It consists of fifteen international PhD projects undertaking complementary research, accompanied by a balanced mix of the latest scientific and transferable skills training, delivered by the project’s local academic partners.

Funding is provided by the Horizon Europe research and innovation program under Marie Skolodowska-Curie (grant agreement No 101119929), with additional funding from the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research, and Innovation (SERI) and the UK Research and Innovation fund (UKRI).