Items filtered by date: Thursday, 07 December 2023

Brazil/UAE: Harsco Environmental is preparing to present its AgroSilicio fertiliser product made from steel slag at the United Nation’s 28th Conference of the Parties (COP28) climate summit taking place in the UAE in November and December 2023. The product has been certified for usage by the Brazilian government, and the state of Minas Gerais invited the company to present it at the event.

AgroSilicio uses recycled steel slag and repurpose it as a calcium silicate-based product that possesses the characteristics of fertiliser and soil conditioner. Harsco Environmental says that the calcium silicate properties of AgroSilicio give the product its versatility. It is being promoted to farming markets in agribusiness. The product is part of the company’s Ecoproducts range and it was introduced in parent company’s Enviri's 2022 Environmental, Social and Governance Report.

Wender Alves, LATAM Regional President at Harsco Environmental, said "Leaders in Minas Gerais State, Brazil are striving to balance industrial growth and sustainability.” He added "It was a breakthrough when we realised that slag from steel production could be transformed into quality fertiliser for the Brazilian agriculture business. We are proud that this has helped significantly reduce the carbon footprint and are honoured to present this on behalf of Minas Gerais State, Brazil, at the world's most important environmental forum."

UK: CCP Building Products has been working with Carbon8 to develop cement-free, carbon negative concrete blocks. The blocks will be produced using parent company SigmaRoc’s Greenbloc technology with Carbon8’s carbon negative aggregates. The approach is based upon reducing the cement content in concrete and CCP has developed a process that uses ground granulated blast-furnace slag (GGBS) as the main raw ingredient. Carbon8’s technology captures and stores more CO₂ in the aggregates than is released in the manufacturing process, resulting in a carbon negative block.

CCP and Carbon8 announced in July 2023 that the first trials of the project had been successful. Ian St Hillaire, the Technology & Innovation Director for SigmaRoc, said “We set about producing trial samples of concrete blocks at site production scale to push the boundaries of possible. This led to some exciting developments in our Greenbloc technology using Carbon8 carbon-negative aggregate. Combining the alternative aggregate with cement-free technology in the right proportions allows us to successfully produce a concrete block that is not only ultra-low in carbon embodiment, but is actually carbon negative.”

CCP are planning to move on to larger plant trials and then start producing environmental product declarations (EPDs) to verify the new product’s carbon negative claims.