TITLE:
MIN-PET. Mineral products from Petrit-T sidestream technology
DESCRIPTION:
Petrit-T is a high quality industrial by product from sponge iron manufacturing with little current utilization. In this upscaling project, its use as an inorganic binder raw material will be scaled up to yield geopolymer-based materials. This ceramic-like material has multiple uses in many applications including concrete elements, foamed concrete, thermal insulation material, and as a low temperature ceramic. Alkali-activation (also called loosely geopolymerization) involves alkali-activation of the precursor material in ambient temperature, and results in a ceramic-like structure with typically better mechanical properties than products in the market. This is achieved at room temperature processing, by employing machinery already available for ceramic and concrete, and results in very little investment and environmental footprint for the final products. Side-stream-based geopolymers have been commercialized using conventional industrial wastes, such as coal fly ash and blast furnace slag; by the successful commercialization of the Petrit-T foam geopolymer, up to 20 000 tonnes of side stream can be used in Höganäs alone, for producing environmentally friendly geopolymer materials. The market applications developed here are acoustic panels with up to 80 M€ sales potential, and sustainable concrete. The consortium covers the whole value chain from the producer to the end users, complemented with research institutions. Despite the simple manufacturing process of geopolymer materials, careful science and engineering is required in designing the reactions. TRL of the proposed method is currently 4, however the development is expected to be rapid and technical feasibility study during WP0 is designed to bring the technology to TRL 5, after which will be a gate review to assess if the technology is indeed ready to be up scaled. After the gate review, two processes (geopolymerization and hydration) will be up scaled for two Petrit-T based products: acoustic panels and concrete blocks.
DURATION:
2016/01/01 - 2018/12/31
FUNDING:
https://eitrawmaterials.eu/project/min-pet/
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