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Editor in Chief Mohamed Wadie

 USA Engineers Invent “Living Cement” Enables Buildings to Do Self-Restoring


Fri 17 Jan 2020 | 01:52 PM
Ahmed Moamar

A group of engineers at Colorado University in the USA has invented a new sort of cement.

They named that kind of the  friendly-environment  mortar as the “ Living Cement”

The living cement consists of sand, special jell, and bacteria.

https://see.news/accor-eyes-building-more-than-30-hotels-in-egypt/

It will be used in constructing buildings that are able to restore themselves without any human intervention at all.

The new cement can absorb the sunrays like a kind of primitive fungi.

Dr. Weller Soropower, Director of the Laboratory of the Living Materials at Colorado University, said that invention paves the way to erect buildings that are able to restore themselves in the future.

He revealed that the blue bacteria, which are one of the components of the cement, are very tiny and monocellular organisms but they grow in bigger settlements to be seen.

This bacteria extracts carbon dioxide from the air to produce calcium carbonate which is the main component of what is called the living cement.

The new kind of cement is a friendly- environment and an alternative to a host of the modern building chemicals.

It also reduces the rates of carbon emission to the air when it is compared to the traditional cement.

However, research on the new cement is still in the early stage.

Scientists are going to conduct more research to reach the final formulation before production on the commercial scale.

https://www.globalcement.com/magazine/articles/964-preview-the-top-100-global-cement-companies-and-global-per-capita-capacity-trends

Since the financial crisis in 2008, the global cement industry has undergone major changes. Industry-wide consolidation and increased operational efficiencies have been evident for some years now, most notably in the newly-completed merger of Lafarge and Holcim to form LafargeHolcim, as well as HeidelbergCement's recently-announced planned acquisition of Italcementi.

In the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) October 2015 World Economic Outlook Update, global GDP is expected to grow by 3.1% year-on-year, 0.2% lower than its July 2015 forecast and 0.4% lower than its April 2015 outlook. This follows a 3.4% growth in 2014.

Recovery has remained modest in the advanced economies, while growth in emerging and developing markets is expected to slow for the fifth consecutive year.

The devaluation of the Chinese Renminbi and the weakening of emerging market currencies compared to the US Dollar have also stunted global GDP growth.