A group of researchers in South Korea have developed a way to reuse fly ash from power plants to make concrete.
Park Se-young has more.
Thermal power plants in Korea discharge eight million tons of fly ash per year.
Some is used to make concrete, but over a million tons of the waste is buried underground because its low reactivity makes it difficult to improve its compressive strength.
Now, Korean researchers have found a way to increase the strength of fly ash by mixing it with chemical additives.
This also reduced the weight of fly ash, …and dramatically reduced the time it takes to solidify …from a month to just a day.
"Adding a small amount of sugar to the binder that I developed delays the rapid stiffening, and I found that it also significantly improved the compressive strength in a short time."
The new technology is a realization of an idea the student had during his third year of college.
It required an unusual research method, but five years of untiring work with guidance from his professors resulted in the development of the technology
"I think the professors had a way of listening carefully to undergraduates, and this, combined with our stellar research environment, brought good results."
The technology has been sold to an eco-friendly building materials company for nearly 90-thousand U.S. dollars as well as one-point-five percent of total sales.
Park Se-young, Arirang News.
