Cement manufacturing releases 1.6 billion tonnes of CO2 annually—about 8% of the global total (World Economic Forum). But imagine storing CO2 in cement itself, making it entirely carbon neutral!

‍Navid Ranjbar believes it is possible to do this and has set out on a mission to find out exactly how!

In the project titled "PolYCEM: Metastable calcium carbonate cement toward cultivating carbon neutrality", awarded by Danmarks Frie Forskningsfond it will be possible to see how it happens using electron diffraction in a TEM.

To elaborate, this technique allows to watch how the crystalline atomic structure of cement ingredients change under various influences, like adding water just like it happens in the real cementing process.

This is possible using Insight Chips' Nano Channel Chips for liquid cell TEM. In a demonstration held last week we proved that it is possible to take nano particles of real cement components and study what happens when they get wetted with water inside the TEM. We watched as the crystalline structure of MgO turned amorphous in seconds.

In our very first try, we did it twice in a row in one 3-hour session, proving that our system can be reliably used to make these remarkable observations.

Navid's project takes place at DTU - Technical University of Denmark with Flemming Grumsen and Dan Meng at the department of DTU Construct. Additionally, the project is also aided by Villum Fonden together with Jakob Sauer Jørgensen with the project titled "MathCrete; Convergence of data and material science: crafting carbon-negative cement".