Aggregates firm building concrete of the future

A NORTH East aggregates firm has announced plans to launch low carbon concrete production at its Teesside site.

Scott Bros is working with Teesside University to run trials intended to see how much it can reduce the amount of Ordinary Portland Cement used as a binding material in concrete.

The Haverton Hill firm, which specialises in recycling material into aggregates for the construction industry, has been investigating uses for fine-grained clay, known as filter cake, which is a byproduct from its wash plant, which converts construction and waste into sand and aggregate.

The silicate clay-rich filter cake has cementitious properties and is otherwise used as low-value, inert engineering fill or pond lining material. Using the filter cake as an alternative binding material reduces the amount of carbonintensive Portland cement required. Once up and running Scott Bros’ plant will be capable of producing 480 cubic metres of low carbon concrete per day.

Through a £612,000 research project, funded by Innovate UK, the university’s School of Science, Engineering & Digital Technologies has been helping Scott Bros to assess how much of the material can be substituted whilst still achieving the same strength and durability of traditional concrete.

The concrete production industry is the third largest producer of carbon emissions globally.

Last year, Scott Bros revealed it was working on commercialising a prototype ‘eco brick’ which also uses filter cake as the binding agent. Director Bob Borthwick said: “By adopting this alternative formulation, we can significantly reduce the large carbon footprint associated with traditional concrete production using a waste material.”