Billions of tonnes of legacy coal combustion products live in landfills or tailings ponds across North America. While efforts have been made to harvest these ponds, the co-mingled, low-grade nature of these byproducts poses a challenge for reclamation and use in cement decarbonization.

Carbon Upcycling can enhance these off-spec materials to meet or exceed current cement and concrete specifications, creating a win-win situation for utilities, cement, and communities.

More than 3 billion tonnes of coal combustion products are ponded today.

Coal Combustion Products we currently work with:
Harvested Class C
Harvested Class F
Bottom ash
Co-mingled ash

Blast furnace slag is best known in the cement industry as a primary supplementary cementitious material. However, as steel production transitions from coal-based processes to electric, the availability of this material is dwindling rapidly while slags from electric processes continue to increase. Due to their varying chemistries and unfavourable properties, these steel slags have not been viable in cement – until now.

Carbon Upcycling’s technology improves the reactivity and durability of steel slags while also mitigating characteristics such as shrinkage and heavy metal leaching.

For every tonne of steel produced, 10% is steel slag.

Slags we currently work with:
Basic Oxygen Furnace slag
Electric Arc Furnace slag
Low-grade Blast Furnace slag

While calcined clays have grown in popularity as the next generation of SCMs, their usage is limited by the availability of high-kaolin clays and the high energy required for treatment.

Carbon Upcycling’s advancements in mechanochemical activation decouple clay activation from fossil fuels entirely by activating clays at ambient temperatures. The breakthrough technology can activate various low-kaolin clays with significantly less energy than calcination, resulting in reduced water and energy demand, enhanced reactivity and durability, and greater availability.

More than 100 billion gigatonnes of clays are in the world to date.

Clays we currently work with:
Low-kaolin (<30%)
High-kaolin (>30%)
Shale