Advanced Concretes

From Colby:

I've looked before at foam concrete / foamcrete as a building / insulating material: https://www.domegaia.com/how-to-make-aircrete.html

And I worked with some university staff years ago on 'heated concrete' (basically they just put iron shavings in it and run electricity through it), to de-ice roads and bridges.

Recently graphene concrete has been in the news for use as a battery or heating solution and for enhanced strength and reduced water permeability, etc, but graphene is simply too expensive currently to be useful https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/adfm.201705183

However I recently learned there is something super low cost called geopolymers -- one is KGP made with flyash from coal residue and an alkaline substance (The alkaline activators typically consist of a mixture of sodium silicate (Na2SiO3) and sodium hydroxide (NaOH), but KGP is different) , and it's supposed to be even cheaper than portland cement. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0263822318312431 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272884218309854

You can get the full papers by putting these into sci-hub.tw (oops now https://sci-hub.se/ ) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compstruct.2018.06.101 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ceramint.2018.04.111

Fulltext https://sci-hub.se/10.1016/j.ceramint.2018.04.111 https://sci-hub.se/10.1016/j.compstruct.2018.06.101

I just wanted to put your attention on this since the benefits of a concrete base that could be heated and also serve as a battery are significant for eco-housing.

On the same topic.. Gates and others have funded this https://www.carboncure.com