Material Evolution has worked with academic and industrial partners to develop and optimise its low carbon geopolymer cement technology for production.
Material Evolution’s registered office is in Belfast but its Mevocrete project is based at the Materials Processing Institute in Middlesbrough.
The Mevocrete project, backed by a £7.6m grant from Innovate UK through the Transforming Foundation Industries (TFI) Challenge programme, began in September 2022 and is now coming to an end.
The waste materials used in Mevocrete are collected from landfill sites and activated through a low-energy solid state chemical reaction process dubbed alkali fusion, that doesn’t require heat or release CO2.
With the R&D phase completing, the plan now is to move to production and become the biggest producer of low carbon cement in the UK by diluting ordinary Portland cement (OPC) with industrial waste supplied, initially, by steelmaker Celsa UK and later, it is planned, by other industrial players.
Mevocrete carries a 20% price premium over OPC but the hope is that costs will reduce as volume picks up.
David Hughes, associate dean at Teesside University and chief scientific officer of Material Evolution, is a co-leader of the Mevocrete project. He said: “This project really is a collaborative journey for a more positive carbon neutral built environment which, through Mevocrete and new technology, sees an untapped supply of historic by-products from heavy industry diverted away from landfill.
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He added: “We’re already having conversations with leading contractors, architects, government agencies and institutions that ultimately have a huge say in the way cement is made and specified. We’re providing the means to a greener future, taking industrial waste from landfills and powering it into something new, sustainable and less carbon intensive.”
Material Evolution’s journey has been accelerated through revisions to the industry standard for concrete, BS 8500, which was revised in October 2023 by the British Standards Institution (BSI). The revision provides greater flexibility for producers to use up to 65% less OPC replacement by two or more, low-carbon cementitious materials, therefore helping both producers and specifiers in the concrete industry.
The new BSI Code of Practice Flex 350 also allows for the specification of a wider range of lower carbon concretes to help decarbonise construction projects.
Material Evolution was founded in 2017 in Belfast by Liz Gilligan and Sam Clark as a design business rather than production.
Business owner Liz Gilligan said: “In just a few years, we’ve achieved a remarkable position within the industry, and soon we’ll be able to launch our first industrial-scale cement factory in Wrexham working at volume – delivering a product that’ll enable today’s contractors, engineers and architects to build a greener tomorrow.
“Our ultimate goal is to remove one gigaton of carbon by 2040, and these ambitious targets are driving our research forward with likeminded collaborators across various industries as we continue to accelerate the net zero agenda.”
