Geopolymer – A concrete foundation for a sustainable future

Concrete is the second most commonly used material on our planet after water, and also the second biggest producer of CO2 emissions. This year alone over 3.2 billion tons of CO2 will be released into our planet’s atmosphere, equivalent to the emissions from every car in Europe, America and China. For over 3,000 years we have been producing concrete by the same primitive method of the heating and grinding of limestone. Humanity is now on the brink of a Fourth Industrial Revolution, where technological advances are providing Architects, Engineers and Material Scientists with the tools to produce the next generation of high-performance, low-impact materials. Materials such as geopolymer concrete, a low-carbon, zero-waste, circular economy model to protect finite natural resources, reduce CO2 emissions and control climate change. Roisin Hyde is a Fulbright award-winning Architect and Doctoral Research Student at Queen’s University Belfast in the area of Novel Materials, Architecture and Design (NoMAD). She received her Bachelor of Architecture from University College Dublin, became a Chartered Member of the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland and practiced for over 15 years in the areas of Sustainable Design and Conservation Architecture. Her current research focuses on the development of a prototype, cement-free, geopolymer concrete façade panel through the use of innovative automated technologies including Materials Characterization, 3D Laser Scanning, Point Cloud Modelling and 3D Printing. As a Fulbright Visiting Researcher she will travel to the University of North Carolina Charlotte to produce a high-performance, geopolymer concrete façade panel with a self-cleaning, hydrophobic, hybrid nanomaterial surface, using alkali-activated industrial by-product and waste materials.