Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says we don't
Speaker 1: need no education. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren, and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. It took me a minute to get that one. Well,
Speaker 1: it's because of the double negative that always trips me up. Yeah. Hi,
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk today about something that's that's related to
Speaker 1: topics we've addressed in the past. Right, We've talked about
Speaker 1: innovations in architecture and previous episodes of Forward Thinking. Today
Speaker 1: we're going to kind of get a little more granular.
Speaker 1: We're actually looking at the future of the materials we
Speaker 1: use to build stuff, mostly annular like building. Was that
Speaker 1: an aggregate pun? It could be, It wasn't intended to be.
Speaker 1: But really, once you make a pun, either you intended
Speaker 1: it or not, it's kind of the world. You've unleashed
Speaker 1: it upon the world, the world to do with what
Speaker 1: they will. Yeah, but we really have. We've talked about
Speaker 1: lots of futuristic methods of putting together buildings. We've talked
Speaker 1: about architecture, we've talked about three D printing of whole houses.
Speaker 1: What else I mean, yes, the modular stuff that people
Speaker 1: are exploring, you know, that the high quality, low environmental
Speaker 1: impact pre fabrication that people are doing. Uh. And of course,
Speaker 1: of course those techniques are going to help shape what
Speaker 1: materials are used in the future. But let us talk
Speaker 1: today about specifically those materials because material science is so
Speaker 1: much fun. Let's get it down to a weird particulate level.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's important too. When you think about it,
Speaker 1: it's almost like everything is made out of materials. It's
Speaker 1: almost like the universe is largely material in nature. Well,
Speaker 1: just where you're living in a material world and you
Speaker 1: are a material girl, you know, and you've got to
Speaker 1: live in a material house. So thinking about materials is
Speaker 1: very important when it comes to how we build our cities,
Speaker 1: from the individual home to the skyscraper, especially to other
Speaker 1: planet habitats. Oh sure, sure, but it's especially important to
Speaker 1: think about all of that kind of stuff because the
Speaker 1: things that we have been classically using throughout history to
Speaker 1: construct our stuff is not sustainable, and it's especially going
Speaker 1: to be less and less sustainable as the population and
Speaker 1: especially the urban population grows. Yeah, so let's think about
Speaker 1: some of the materials that we use most often to
Speaker 1: build our building. So there's there's straw, there's sticks, right,
Speaker 1: and there's bricks that keeps the wolves held at least
Speaker 1: one of them. But no, no, no, no, no, let's
Speaker 1: think like that. We got wood, you got steel, you've
Speaker 1: got concrete. Those are big glass, brick and mortar. These
Speaker 1: are these are the old stand bys, the hits. Sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: not everyone lives in the yard, right, But there are
Speaker 1: ways that we could think of too not only improve
Speaker 1: our methods of using these these greatest hits of the
Speaker 1: building materials catalog, but also to branch out into totally
Speaker 1: different areas of coming up with hard, sturdy stuff to
Speaker 1: make the walls around us out of. But before we
Speaker 1: do that, I think we should look at what the
Speaker 1: motivation for this discussion would be. I mean, you might
Speaker 1: be thinking, well, I don't know what the heck is
Speaker 1: wrong with concrete. We already make stuff out of concrete.
Speaker 1: That seems fine. Why don't we just cover the whole
Speaker 1: world in concrete? Yeah, why don't we make boats out
Speaker 1: of concrete? Okay? Well, that one I think we can
Speaker 1: we can more easily dismiss. But why don't we make
Speaker 1: computers out of concrete? I'm just saying, you know, let's
Speaker 1: let's talk about the problems the challenges we face relying
Speaker 1: on a substance like concrete. Now, Now, first of all,
Speaker 1: we have to admit concrete was an amazing technological achievement. Right.
Speaker 1: Without concrete, the world would not be the way it is. Sure,
Speaker 1: and uh so, concrete is made by binding together aggregate
Speaker 1: material with water and cement. It's pretty straightforward. And aggregate
Speaker 1: material could literally be anything from crushed shells to small
Speaker 1: rocks to say, gravel, sandy, whatever. And while so, the
Speaker 1: real technology we're talking about here is cement, the idea
Speaker 1: of cement, And and what you say is correct. Cement
Speaker 1: is an amazing technology that has made much of human
Speaker 1: civilization possible. But it does have its problems. Uh For
Speaker 1: one thing, it is incredibly energy intensive to produce. According
Speaker 1: to the US Energy Information Administration, as of July, the
Speaker 1: cement industry was the single most energy hungry of all
Speaker 1: manufacturing industries in the United States. Yeah, and and that
Speaker 1: that energy that it's using is not really green energy particularly, No,
Speaker 1: it tends to rely heavily on coal and on petroleum
Speaker 1: coke and coke that's not the soft drink, not the
Speaker 1: stuff that is a refreshing way to taste the feeling
Speaker 1: it is. However, the real thing it sort of is, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a high carbon, low hydrogen petroleum residue. It's not
Speaker 1: especially refreshing. The way you make coke typically is that
Speaker 1: you put essentially put coal in an oven and you
Speaker 1: heat coal up to a very high temperature and you
Speaker 1: end up with this almost kind of it looks very
Speaker 1: spongy and porous substance that is coke. So it's really
Speaker 1: ah another stage of coal. It is a fossil fuel,
Speaker 1: which means it has all the trappings of other fossil fuels,
Speaker 1: including the fact that when you use it in combustion
Speaker 1: or you use it in in in any kind of
Speaker 1: firing capacity, you're releasing carbon. Right, And we'll talk about
Speaker 1: that in just a minute. But back to the energy
Speaker 1: consumption in According to that same e I A report,
Speaker 1: the cement industry alone accounted for one quarter of one
Speaker 1: percent of all US energy consumption. So you might be
Speaker 1: thinking one quarter one Yeah, that doesn't sound like all
Speaker 1: that much really, but you would be wrong. This is
Speaker 1: just one single industry against the background of all transportation, heating, grid, energy, cars, everything,
Speaker 1: And when you think about it in that in those terms,
Speaker 1: that's huge. That's enormous, UH. And it represents, in the
Speaker 1: words of that e i A report quote, a share
Speaker 1: of national energy used roughly ten times its share of
Speaker 1: the nation's gross output of goods and services on average,
Speaker 1: other energy intensive industry's share of energy uses roughly twice
Speaker 1: their share of gross output. So that that's comparing its
Speaker 1: role in the economy to how much energy it consumes.
Speaker 1: So it's real inefficient. Yeah, you might say that. So
Speaker 1: So in other words, the value we get from the
Speaker 1: production is uh does not necessarily justify the energy cost
Speaker 1: of producing it uh compared to other types of products. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: I mean you might say it justifies it. In the
Speaker 1: cement is just ubiquitous around the world. It's one of
Speaker 1: the most to use products out there. In the e
Speaker 1: i A also predicted that increasing energy use from the
Speaker 1: cement industry is going to continue into the future. It's
Speaker 1: a growing trend. Yeah, I mean, as urbanization happens, as
Speaker 1: we have talked about a lot, people like building urban
Speaker 1: environments out of cement because it's dirty, and it's great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So why does cement use so much energy energy to produce?
Speaker 1: What are what are they doing? Are they like do
Speaker 1: they have to detonate a volcano every time? They every time?
Speaker 1: It's like alternate Thursdays. Yeah, it's only for fun. Well
Speaker 1: what is the process? So, so let's I'll get into
Speaker 1: a little more detail with cement. So the most common
Speaker 1: type of cement around the world is called Portland's cement.
Speaker 1: So it enjoys coffee, beards and flannel. Why does it
Speaker 1: require so much energy? Well, it's a chemical combination of
Speaker 1: stuff like calcium silicon. Your just killing me with those
Speaker 1: two thousand nine jokes. Look, I'm a product of my time,
Speaker 1: and that's you know, the dead jokes are gonna be
Speaker 1: related back by. But yes, it's it's a chemical combination
Speaker 1: of stuff like calcium, silicon, aluminum, iron, and some other stuff.
Speaker 1: Raw materials that are used to make cement include limestone, shells,
Speaker 1: chalk and shale clay, slate, slag which is essentially runoff
Speaker 1: from other manufacturing processes, uh, silica, sand, and iron ore.
Speaker 1: So you take all these different ingredients, uh, and you
Speaker 1: need to put them into a a furnace or a
Speaker 1: kiln and subject them to incredibly high temperatures. Uh. The
Speaker 1: people usually refer to this as like a heating and
Speaker 1: firing process, and not just for a few minutes, So
Speaker 1: it's for a very long sustained period, and it often
Speaker 1: requires multiple heating and firing uh sessions. So it's not
Speaker 1: like you put the stuff in, you turn the temperature
Speaker 1: up to you know, a thousand degrees, and you walk
Speaker 1: off in twenty minutes later, Hey you got some ent.
Speaker 1: That's not the way it works now. So because you
Speaker 1: have to heat the stuff up to such a high temperature,
Speaker 1: that's where a lot of this energy consumption is coming from.
Speaker 1: That you have to get the temperature up to a
Speaker 1: certain level and sustain it for a good long while.
Speaker 1: What's the point of heating it to such a high temperature?
Speaker 1: What does it do? It turns this this collection of materials. Uh.
Speaker 1: And again it's not like cement is going to contain
Speaker 1: all of the things I listed, but it's going to
Speaker 1: contain a collection of those things. It's gonna heat all
Speaker 1: of that up and and it's going to end up
Speaker 1: creating a substance that's sort of rock like. And this
Speaker 1: is in fact cement but in order to make it usable,
Speaker 1: you have to grind that stuff down into powder. So
Speaker 1: that requires more energy obviously to convert the rock into
Speaker 1: the powder version. That's what you end up mixing with
Speaker 1: the aggregate and water. Uh and uh. It becomes the
Speaker 1: binding agents. So that's dry cement. If you were to
Speaker 1: mix water with that, you would get wet cement. And
Speaker 1: um uh. That is part of why it requires so
Speaker 1: much energy. There's another component of energy. It isn't addressed
Speaker 1: by this process, but it is in fact a very
Speaker 1: important thing that we have to keep in mind and
Speaker 1: something that that Joe you wrote about in the video
Speaker 1: episode we did on this subject. That's the fact that
Speaker 1: not only do you have to put in a lot
Speaker 1: of energy to produce cement, but then you have to
Speaker 1: use even more energy to get it to where it
Speaker 1: needs to go. Right, So you're actually spending even more
Speaker 1: energy to transport this finished product because you just made
Speaker 1: powdered rocks. Those aren't light, right, I mean, I mean
Speaker 1: even I mean it's lighter than than than wet rock.
Speaker 1: By the by the subtraction of the they should shift
Speaker 1: the cement wet. Well, it's my idea on top of
Speaker 1: the fact that it's heavy cement trucks. I mean they
Speaker 1: do that sometimes on top of the and you've got
Speaker 1: to pour that cement out by a certain amount of
Speaker 1: time or else it becomes dry in one of the
Speaker 1: cement trucks, and that's a mess. But there's a MythBusters
Speaker 1: episode blow up. Yeah, it was pretty impressive. But I
Speaker 1: was gonna I was gonna add that not only is
Speaker 1: it heavy, but your average construction project needs a crap
Speaker 1: ton of the stuff. Right, So it is a non
Speaker 1: trivial issue that not only does it take a lot
Speaker 1: of energy to create this stuff, it takes a lot
Speaker 1: of energy to get it to where it needs to be. Well,
Speaker 1: let let's let us emphasize how non trivial this is.
Speaker 1: So we mentioned earlier that there are carbon emissions. Exactly
Speaker 1: how much do we know? Well, according to a group
Speaker 1: of studies that was conducted through Columbia University CIRCA. Collectively,
Speaker 1: this group of studies was called State of the Planet.
Speaker 1: If you want to look it up, it's pretty fascinating. Um,
Speaker 1: the cement industry is responsible for five per cent of
Speaker 1: global carbon dioxide emissions. On one industry responsible for five Yeah,
Speaker 1: and part of that part of the reason there is
Speaker 1: that we are using so much cement. I mean, okay,
Speaker 1: look like we've we said that. We said this like
Speaker 1: kind of in passing, but to give to give you
Speaker 1: a number. According to a report from two thousand nine
Speaker 1: from the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, concrete is
Speaker 1: the second most consumed TiAl in the world every year,
Speaker 1: after only water, and by consumed, I don't mean that
Speaker 1: we're all rock biters. I just mean that that we're
Speaker 1: making a lot of it and we're putting a lot
Speaker 1: of it. Tease. Well, this rock biter would like to
Speaker 1: issue a little defense because I don't think that our
Speaker 1: purpose today is to say, hey, we need to stop
Speaker 1: using cement to make concrete to make our buildings. That
Speaker 1: that's not exactly the point. But I would say that
Speaker 1: if we can replace some portion of our share of
Speaker 1: traditional cement and concrete with better, more sustainable materials that
Speaker 1: create structures that are just too safe and get the
Speaker 1: job done, that would be a very good thing. This
Speaker 1: this fell core agrees with you. Rock biter isn't just
Speaker 1: a fun insult. It's it's it's a reference to story alright,
Speaker 1: So never ending story references aside and trust me, we
Speaker 1: could do an entire podcast of them. What is the
Speaker 1: future of never ending story references? Apparently it will go
Speaker 1: on forever based upon the title. Uh so at any rate, Well,
Speaker 1: let's let's talk about some ways to make concrete more sustainable,
Speaker 1: or to make concrete last even longer, so it helps
Speaker 1: justify the process of making it in the first place. Right,
Speaker 1: So if we can either make better concrete where it
Speaker 1: requires less energy to create, or we make concrete that
Speaker 1: lasts longer, so therefore the investment we make is quote
Speaker 1: unquote worth it. Uh that's the first step. So let
Speaker 1: me talk about a few of those. So one thing
Speaker 1: we can look at is are there ways to make
Speaker 1: concrete itself better, right as opposed to going to a
Speaker 1: complete alternative. Are there things that we can do that
Speaker 1: either make concrete last longer so therefore the energy investment
Speaker 1: that we make at the beginning pays off over a
Speaker 1: longer amount of time, or that we can decrease the
Speaker 1: the ecological impact of creating the concrete in the first place.
Speaker 1: So we started looking into some of this stuff. One
Speaker 1: of the thing we wanted to talk about was the
Speaker 1: ability to make stronger types of concrete so this idea
Speaker 1: that it could last a longer time, we could hold
Speaker 1: a greater load. I read a lot of very cynical
Speaker 1: UH forum posts from people who work in the concrete
Speaker 1: business and talked about different alternatives to your standard approach
Speaker 1: to a concrete mix for stuff like roads or sidewalks,
Speaker 1: And it almost always came into like a thing where
Speaker 1: we said we would recommend using this particular type of
Speaker 1: mixture because it would last a longer amount of time,
Speaker 1: and the response we would get back is, but we
Speaker 1: need to have a job in ten years, so we
Speaker 1: want to make sure we have to replace this. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't know how serious they were being, but there
Speaker 1: was that. I was seeing it pop up in multiple
Speaker 1: forums as I was looking into this. By the way,
Speaker 1: people who work with concrete they are a very funny
Speaker 1: group that has an incredibly dry sense of humor. Anyway,
Speaker 1: concrete tends to be very very resistant to compression. Like
Speaker 1: it's good at standing up to compression, but not so
Speaker 1: much with ten stile strength. In other words, when you're
Speaker 1: pulling along UH concrete, it tends to tear apart unless
Speaker 1: you mix it with something else. So one way to
Speaker 1: make stronger concrete is to increase the amount of cement
Speaker 1: you add. But we just talked about how cement is
Speaker 1: an energy intensive material. Right to to create cement, but
Speaker 1: if you if you want to make stronger concrete, you
Speaker 1: could add more cement to your cement to aggregate ratio.
Speaker 1: For example, some people might say, instead of making that
Speaker 1: a four bag mix, make it a five bag mix.
Speaker 1: In other words, adding an extra bag of cement for
Speaker 1: the same volume of some of concrete. So adding more
Speaker 1: cement is not necessarily the best choice, but you can
Speaker 1: do other things, like you can create mixtures in the
Speaker 1: concrete that increase its strength. For example, carbon fibers. We've
Speaker 1: talked about these. They're very lightweight, they have incredible strength.
Speaker 1: They specifically will add ten stile strength to UH to
Speaker 1: a material UH. If you do at with concrete, you
Speaker 1: get what is called fibra rated concrete. It's a weird
Speaker 1: word because it's not really a word, but that's what
Speaker 1: they call it in the bizes And I guess. So
Speaker 1: they also have polymer concrete, so they're adding polymers. Those
Speaker 1: are those long chain molecules. We've talked about, plastic being
Speaker 1: the famous polymer um and they'll use polymers to either
Speaker 1: offset or even completely replaced cement as the binding agent.
Speaker 1: So you could have a concrete where polymers are the binder,
Speaker 1: not cement, and that is potentially better, But again it
Speaker 1: depends on how you're producing the polymers. If it's all
Speaker 1: petroleum based, you're really just again shifting some stuff over.
Speaker 1: It may not be a net gain. Part of the
Speaker 1: issue here is that if you can't make it an
Speaker 1: an affordable alternative to the pre existing approach of concrete,
Speaker 1: then from a financial standpoint, it's very hard to justify. Right.
Speaker 1: If you're a company and you're looking to make a
Speaker 1: profit out of building a project for a customer, then
Speaker 1: one of the ways you can maximize your profits is
Speaker 1: minimizing your costs. And while it might make more environmental
Speaker 1: sense to go with a different material, it might make
Speaker 1: less financial sense. And money makes the world go round.
Speaker 1: Not to get totally cynical, but and of course there
Speaker 1: are some some design firms out there who say, uh, look,
Speaker 1: we build that into our price. You're gonna be paying
Speaker 1: a higher price, but you're also going to know that
Speaker 1: you're you're building isn't going to have the same environmental
Speaker 1: impact as the one across the street. And for some
Speaker 1: people that's true, yes, and it might last longer. It's
Speaker 1: a great point. So let's talk about greener concrete. Now.
Speaker 1: One thing you need to know is if you do
Speaker 1: a Google search for green concrete, one of the things
Speaker 1: that pops up is the fact that green concrete doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily mean eco friendly concrete because the American Concrete Institute
Speaker 1: uses the term green concrete to mean concrete that is
Speaker 1: hardened or there's the set but not yet hardened. Essentially,
Speaker 1: it's like it's like when you're saying someone is green,
Speaker 1: you know, being meaning that they haven't become a seasoned
Speaker 1: veteran or whatever in this yeah, exactly exactly, so not
Speaker 1: fully ripe. That doesn't mean that there aren't folks trying
Speaker 1: to make a more eco friendly concrete. There are plenty
Speaker 1: out there, and some companies offer alternatives to Portland's cement uh,
Speaker 1: creating their own type of cement using stuff like landfill waste,
Speaker 1: which really the biggest one that I've seen is fly ash. Essentially,
Speaker 1: that's what's left after you've put stuff through an incinerator.
Speaker 1: So if you incinerate uh garbage, then you end up
Speaker 1: with this ash material. That stuff can actually be used
Speaker 1: to create cement. So if you're going to be incinerating anyway,
Speaker 1: not necessarily the best way to get rid of garbage. Again,
Speaker 1: we're shuffling things around a little bit, but you can
Speaker 1: at least take that byproduct that's going to exist whether
Speaker 1: you use it or not, and put it to use. Uh.
Speaker 1: They're also mixtures that use fly ash that actually require
Speaker 1: less water than Portland's cement, So then you can have
Speaker 1: some water conservation in there um and they can also
Speaker 1: be more resilient, so there are some bonuses there. Then
Speaker 1: we've got some other kind of cool but not necessarily uh,
Speaker 1: environmentally beneficial versions of concrete, translucent concrete being one of them.
Speaker 1: Have you guys ever seen translucent concrete? Now seen pictures
Speaker 1: of it. All you have to do is go to
Speaker 1: Epcot and Walt Disney World. You will see translucent concrete
Speaker 1: if you stick around long enough. That might sound kind
Speaker 1: of crazy. Translucent concrete. How could you see through it?
Speaker 1: I mean, concrete seems like the very definition of opaque,
Speaker 1: and from what I understand, the concrete itself remains opaque.
Speaker 1: The issue is that it's embedded with fiber optic material.
Speaker 1: You put a ton of fiber optics, fiber optics inside
Speaker 1: the concrete itself, which will allow light to transfer from
Speaker 1: one side to the other. So it's kind of like
Speaker 1: trans translucent concrete, but we're cheating a bit. It would
Speaker 1: be like saying that your wall is translucent because you've
Speaker 1: cut some whole in it and you can look through.
Speaker 1: But what they're doing is they're using these fiber optics.
Speaker 1: It allows light to transfer from insight to outside, and
Speaker 1: it creates a much warmer environment than your classic cold concrete.
Speaker 1: So imagine a building where you're getting some natural light
Speaker 1: coming in. It's supplementing the light in the area. It's
Speaker 1: creating a warmer, more welcoming in uh a place than
Speaker 1: you would if you just had cinder block walls. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like like the glow cloud, it just fills every environment
Speaker 1: with a sense of peace, all hail. So I mentioned
Speaker 1: that you can see these at EPCOT. At Epcut, they
Speaker 1: have sidewalks that have uh these translucent concrete uh pant
Speaker 1: paving stones essentially, and they've got l e ed s
Speaker 1: underneath that can shine through. Kids go nuts because at
Speaker 1: night you start seeing these patterns and they can have
Speaker 1: all these different shimmering lights that lights change color, so
Speaker 1: it becomes this kind of interactive sidewalk. Not that it's
Speaker 1: not really interactive, because it's all working on like a
Speaker 1: pre programmed um uh pattern, but it's certainly more interactive
Speaker 1: than a brick of concrete. Yeah, so kids love it.
Speaker 1: I loved it. The first time I saw it. I
Speaker 1: looked at thought, how did they do that? And then
Speaker 1: I realized it's got to be fiber optic. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then you came to understand and all the magic was
Speaker 1: lost and yes, and then I saw, you know, I
Speaker 1: saw the the young lady playing Mickey Mouse with the
Speaker 1: head off in the back parking lot, and it just
Speaker 1: all fell apart from me. No, actually, people, Mickey Mouse
Speaker 1: is real. Forget I said anything in two thousand and four.
Speaker 1: This was actually, um supposedly invented. I say supposedly invented
Speaker 1: in two thousand and four, not that it wasn't invented,
Speaker 1: but that we're not entirely sure this is actually the
Speaker 1: origin of translucent concrete. But there was a Hungarian architecture.
Speaker 1: There is an Hungarian architect by the name of Aaron Lass.
Speaker 1: And I know I'm brutalizing that last name because I
Speaker 1: don't speak Hungarian, but at any rate, uh, that was
Speaker 1: the first person credited for creating this kind of concrete.
Speaker 1: Beyond that, we've talked about this before, a self repairing
Speaker 1: concrete or self healing concrete. UM. We mentioned that in
Speaker 1: our December two episode about indestructible materials. We were wondering
Speaker 1: if that was ever possible to truly create an indestructible material,
Speaker 1: and we kind of discussed the fact that you're more
Speaker 1: likely to build stuff that can repair itself somewhat after
Speaker 1: we've damaged. UM. So, this kind of concrete typically has
Speaker 1: one of two things in it, either some form of
Speaker 1: polymer inside of it or some type of bacteria inside
Speaker 1: of it. In both cases, the that material is activated
Speaker 1: when it contacts water. So you've got some concrete a
Speaker 1: crack forms, Water is going to find its way in
Speaker 1: there because there's yes, you know, you've got a permeable surface.
Speaker 1: When it contacts that polymer, then the polymer would swell,
Speaker 1: thus plugging that crack. Or if it contacts bacteria, it's
Speaker 1: the bacteria version. The bacteria start to produce do something
Speaker 1: like calcium carbonate, which then fills up the cracks. So
Speaker 1: in either case you have a system that is filling
Speaker 1: up cracks. Overall, the the strength of the repaired material
Speaker 1: is not quite as great as it would be without
Speaker 1: the cracks at all, but it's more than enough to
Speaker 1: suffice for whatever role you have it. That's the whole
Speaker 1: purpose of it, and and to limit the damage that
Speaker 1: could happen from an exposed crack that goes unplugged. Well,
Speaker 1: that's a great segue to the next thing I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about, because this also involves the use of
Speaker 1: bacteria to create minerals. Bacterial production or biogenic production of
Speaker 1: calcium carbonate. Yeah, because right, I mean a lot of
Speaker 1: bacteria honestly, are pretty lazy. You know, they don't help
Speaker 1: you do the dishes. Uh, they never vacuum, right, But
Speaker 1: but we can have them help us build concrete materials. Nice. Yes.
Speaker 1: So there's a company originally out of North Carolina called
Speaker 1: bio Mace a good name, boy, good name, which is
Speaker 1: based on the idea of building bricks out of the
Speaker 1: mineralization potential of micro organisms. Uh. The founder is named
Speaker 1: Ginger Ginger Dosia, and she came up with the idea
Speaker 1: by looking at the way coral reefs are built by
Speaker 1: millions of tiny micro organisms. Yes, I I thought so too,
Speaker 1: and and so one of the things she observes is
Speaker 1: that the main structural ingredient of coral is going to
Speaker 1: be calcium carbonate, which is a constituent of limestone, which,
Speaker 1: if you'll recall from earlier, is a common ingredient and cement.
Speaker 1: And so the bio mason process goes sort of like this.
Speaker 1: You start with some sand and you place that in
Speaker 1: a brick mold, and then you inject the sand with
Speaker 1: bacteria colony but with the bacteria Spora sarcina pasteuria i
Speaker 1: and these bacteria are natural producers of calcite. And then
Speaker 1: you feed the bacteria slash sand mixture a diet of
Speaker 1: calcium ions in water. Yeah, delicious, And this causes calcium
Speaker 1: carbonate to form around the bacteria and makes the sand
Speaker 1: particles stick together. Uh. It takes about two to five
Speaker 1: days to grow a brick, that's what they call it.
Speaker 1: But when the brick hardens into a solid brick, But
Speaker 1: this doesn't really seem to be any longer than making
Speaker 1: a clay brick in a kiln, and the process doesn't
Speaker 1: directly require fuel, which is nice. Also the idea and
Speaker 1: this is the coolest part to me is that you
Speaker 1: don't have to make the bricks in one place and
Speaker 1: then ship them. You can take them. You can essentially
Speaker 1: make them on site with a powder or a syrup
Speaker 1: containing the bacterial culture and the other key ingredients, using
Speaker 1: your own sand and water locally sourced. So that ends
Speaker 1: up saving you a ton on transportation costs since you're
Speaker 1: just transporting the actual bacteria to the place that needs
Speaker 1: to be and you can buy local for the sand
Speaker 1: and and of course transportation emissions as well. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: there's a lot of different potential ways to to decrease
Speaker 1: the environmental impact of building material construction, but there's one
Speaker 1: really cool potential application of an idea like this. I
Speaker 1: started to think, wait a second, auto fabrication of building
Speaker 1: materials on site. That sounds like you could have fantastic
Speaker 1: implications in space exploration. And what do you know, NASA
Speaker 1: is on it. Yeah. Yeah, So, in fact, I don't
Speaker 1: know if this is still in the works, if it's
Speaker 1: still likely to happen, but in the past, at least
Speaker 1: in the past few years, some researchers at NASA and
Speaker 1: elsewhere discussed the possibility of growing bacterial bricks for construction
Speaker 1: projects on Mars. Uh, and so you might ask, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, why can't you just ship your bricks to Mars.
Speaker 1: If you have to ask that, you haven't been listening
Speaker 1: to this show, but that's okay, maybe you're new. Uh,
Speaker 1: it would be hilariously expensive and in terms of energy,
Speaker 1: I think the term would be profligant. Mm hmm. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now we've we've also talked about not just the the
Speaker 1: expense of shipping things, but the idea that uh, you
Speaker 1: know that also is a domino effect, right, because you're
Speaker 1: talking about having to use more rocket fuel to get things.
Speaker 1: If this is a process where you don't need fuel
Speaker 1: in the actual process itself, and you have a habitat
Speaker 1: suitable for this bacteria to thrive in on the Martian landscape,
Speaker 1: suddenly you have access to a building material production facility
Speaker 1: on Mars itself. This is one of those things that's
Speaker 1: really hard for us to imagine. Like most of our
Speaker 1: most of the things we talked about when it comes
Speaker 1: to Mars relate to how do you create a habitat
Speaker 1: suitable for growing food? For example, We don't really think
Speaker 1: beyond that. Most of what we talk about is that
Speaker 1: that's the basic step. Yeah, but one exactly. But we
Speaker 1: don't think about like how do we make a factory
Speaker 1: on Mars? That that that seems like so far outside
Speaker 1: the realm of possibility, but even how do we build
Speaker 1: a permanent farm on Mars? Because really the best option
Speaker 1: for farming for us is going to be able to
Speaker 1: if we're able to build something underground. Uh. I guess
Speaker 1: what's really great for building basements? Yeah, it could It
Speaker 1: could very well be that this sort of this sort
Speaker 1: of approach would allow us to shore up a a
Speaker 1: underground um cavern, if you will, that would host the
Speaker 1: habitats that that colony colonists would stay in because because
Speaker 1: Mars has dirt a plenty. Yeah. So in October there
Speaker 1: was an article a New Scientist I read this about
Speaker 1: quote bug boxes for Mars missions. I like that name. Uh.
Speaker 1: And these are collections of microorganisms. They'd weigh almost nothing,
Speaker 1: and you can take them with you at very little
Speaker 1: launch cost in terms of cargo. But they can create
Speaker 1: colonies of microorganisms that multiply based on resources that are
Speaker 1: available on the surface of Mars. And there are a
Speaker 1: lot of possible advantages to synthetic biology. You could construct
Speaker 1: building materials of course, but there are other things that
Speaker 1: you can make food uh necessary chemicals like plastics and
Speaker 1: anti freeze and stuff. You need to do science on Mars.
Speaker 1: But but the creation of the building materials is the
Speaker 1: one I wanted to focus on now. And it's similar
Speaker 1: to the bio Mason idea. A team led by a
Speaker 1: Brown graduate named Andre Bernier and that was advised by
Speaker 1: Lynn Rothschild at the Ames Research Center a few years back.
Speaker 1: They proposed a way of using that same bacterium I
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier to to make bricks and mortar. And this
Speaker 1: play on the idea that the bacterium converts urrea, which
Speaker 1: is found in human urine, into ammonium, and the sammonium
Speaker 1: increases the pH of the environment so that cements made
Speaker 1: of calcium carbonate can actually form. It's not too acidic.
Speaker 1: And so you p on the bacteria and they help
Speaker 1: you make bricks out of the Martian gravel and soil.
Speaker 1: The circle of life. It's beautiful. This is so much
Speaker 1: cooler than that scene in water World, the the opener.
Speaker 1: I don't remember what happened, oh I I just just
Speaker 1: the very first thing you see in water World is
Speaker 1: Kevin Costner like like peeing into a filtration device so
Speaker 1: that he can drave so that he can drink water.
Speaker 1: You know this is great too, because, like we were
Speaker 1: talking about with the fly ash, you know, anytime you
Speaker 1: can make use of a byproduct that is going to
Speaker 1: be there anyway, that's that's good. Um. You know, some
Speaker 1: time in some cases, like with the fly ash, you
Speaker 1: might argue, while producing the fly ash is not necessarily
Speaker 1: that great in the first place. So that's a different
Speaker 1: argument where you say, how do we get off of
Speaker 1: systems like incinerators where we're creating a lot of fly ash? Uh?
Speaker 1: And that's that's equally important to have. But as long
Speaker 1: as you do have it, you might as well be
Speaker 1: able to put that stuff to use. And bacteria aren't
Speaker 1: the only small organisms that are being investigated for this
Speaker 1: kind of purpose, No, sure, how how about fungus. I
Speaker 1: love a fungus. I do too. I like eating mushrooms,
Speaker 1: and I would you know, I'd make a house out
Speaker 1: of mushrooms. I could deal with that. That would be
Speaker 1: a delicious house. You'd be a smurf. So the the
Speaker 1: New York architecture firm called The Living which I think
Speaker 1: that was the name of a Radiohead album somewhere back there.
Speaker 1: But they're called the Living and they designed a forty
Speaker 1: foot high tower called Hi Fi High with a y
Speaker 1: I'm not sure why, made out of about ten thousand
Speaker 1: bricks consisting of corn, fiber and my celium fungus. My
Speaker 1: Celium is like the root structures that come out of
Speaker 1: out of a mushroom, out of fungus. And this this
Speaker 1: tower was displayed in the PS one courtyard of the
Speaker 1: Museum of Modern Art in So wait a second, how
Speaker 1: do you build a forty foot high tower out of mushrooms? Well,
Speaker 1: with this technique, they made bricks. They made bricks with
Speaker 1: mushroom binding agents. So the bricks were grown in molds
Speaker 1: out of organic waste and then seeded with fungus to
Speaker 1: bind it all together. The bricks took about five days
Speaker 1: to harden into a solid shape. So they're organic. They're biodegradable,
Speaker 1: which means they're They're probably not a good candidate for
Speaker 1: constructing a skyscraper or something like that, but they could
Speaker 1: be used for construction and buildings meant to last a
Speaker 1: few years, like temporary structures, maybe at a festival or
Speaker 1: fair ground or something like that. Sure, thing. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: and these fungus, these fungus bound bricks, they can be
Speaker 1: made without mind materials, without waste products, and without direct
Speaker 1: carbon emissions. So I think that's a pretty cool idea.
Speaker 1: They're still being developed, so i'd say you should look
Speaker 1: out for more on this in the future. Another thing
Speaker 1: that you might want to look out for is hemp composites. Yes,
Speaker 1: hemp is in marijuana, that kind of thing. Indeed, friends,
Speaker 1: um so okay, So so the inner like wood like
Speaker 1: cores of hempstocks are called herds information I did not
Speaker 1: know previously. It's you are herds, um. And these can
Speaker 1: be processed and then mixed with minerals likelime or or
Speaker 1: cement to create a building material that can actually be
Speaker 1: carbon negative because the manufacturing process can be offset by
Speaker 1: the growth of the hemp plants to begin with, um
Speaker 1: and okay, like like honestly, y'all right now, most of
Speaker 1: the information about architecture materials is being provided by private
Speaker 1: companies who have a vested interest in making the stuff
Speaker 1: sound really great. So I don't want to report any
Speaker 1: facts and figures that that could be biased. It could
Speaker 1: be a lot of cherry picking going on, right Well,
Speaker 1: that's the thing we definitely get into with these ideas
Speaker 1: about alternative building materials. So we've we've we know the
Speaker 1: problems with the stuff most people are selling. But then
Speaker 1: also a lot of the solutions are coming from people
Speaker 1: who are trying to sell something as well. So it's
Speaker 1: it's worth remembering even though they're preaching a message of sustainability,
Speaker 1: which is a good thing you should always be wary of.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, And it's not that it's not that
Speaker 1: we're saying that necessarily any of these people are are
Speaker 1: are lying about stuff. You know. It probably they went
Speaker 1: into this business because they believe strongly in the technology
Speaker 1: that they're developing, and that's wonderful and beautiful. But you know,
Speaker 1: you know, just just just watch out. Great critical thinking
Speaker 1: is always good. Um. And I would say that's going
Speaker 1: to be extremely interesting in the next few years as
Speaker 1: perhaps laws specifically here in the US begin to allow
Speaker 1: the grow the growth of HEMP two, to see whether
Speaker 1: more companies start investigating this as a source. Now, I
Speaker 1: will say I'm a little little worried because William Randolph
Speaker 1: Hurst told me that any building mail of HEMP would
Speaker 1: gradually drive me insane. Yeah, that that building, would pick
Speaker 1: up an axe and slay your grandmother. That I would
Speaker 1: also listen to jazz music, a whole bunch of stuff
Speaker 1: to go along with it, jazz music. I think it's
Speaker 1: time to talk about wool and seaweed Minecraft. What's building
Speaker 1: out of wool? Tell me Minecraft? You can do Minecraft
Speaker 1: pay Minecraft, but that's great, tell me about it. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: you use you shears, and you shear sheep and then
Speaker 1: you get a cubic meter. I don't know how a
Speaker 1: sheep produces a cubic meter. Sometimes two cubic meters are
Speaker 1: mystical and impressive creatures. But I have a question. I
Speaker 1: have a question about Minecraft. In Minecraft, do materials have
Speaker 1: um compression resistance properties? Well, so, like, if you build
Speaker 1: a castle with a foundation made of wool, will that stand? Yes,
Speaker 1: that part, that part of the COMPRESSIONI of wool is
Speaker 1: not to be questioned. It is just as good as
Speaker 1: as obsidian, which is the one of the strongest materials
Speaker 1: in the game. However, they do have some compression effects
Speaker 1: because now you can build with slime and it's bouncy.
Speaker 1: But part in my cough in the background, you guys
Speaker 1: couldn't see me. But but I was. I was laughing
Speaker 1: so hard that I kind of started coughing over here.
Speaker 1: Please please continue. Well, let's talk about actual real world
Speaker 1: uses of well, because while I love building stuff with
Speaker 1: wool in Minecraft, if there's a thunderstorm and lightning strikes it,
Speaker 1: it goes up in flames. Oh no, well, no, I
Speaker 1: do want to mention this. Not because this is the
Speaker 1: one example of the brick that's going to save the future,
Speaker 1: but there are all kinds of studies about how to
Speaker 1: make better composite materials. Um you you know, and it's
Speaker 1: a tradition that goes back to ancient times. You can
Speaker 1: make a brick in the ancient world by mixing mud
Speaker 1: and straw. There you've got a composite material, you've got
Speaker 1: a binding agent, and you've got this straw in between
Speaker 1: that helps strengthen it. Uh. And one of the things
Speaker 1: that I came across that I thought was pretty interesting is,
Speaker 1: uh this example of wool and seaweed. So in two
Speaker 1: thousand and ten in the journal Construction and Building Materials,
Speaker 1: there was an article called clay based composite stabilized with
Speaker 1: natural polymer and fiber. And this was a cool experiment
Speaker 1: that they found that for unfired earthen bricks are the
Speaker 1: ones that you don't have to cook. You can significantly
Speaker 1: increase compression resistance if you introduce a couple of things
Speaker 1: al alginate. I'm assuming that's a hard g not alginate,
Speaker 1: but it's alginate, which is a biomaterial found in the
Speaker 1: cell walls of brown algae seaweed. This common brown seaweed
Speaker 1: you see in the ocean um and keeps wool. And
Speaker 1: these bricks were designed so they didn't have to be fired.
Speaker 1: Like I said, that's an energy saver, and they can
Speaker 1: be made from locally available excess biomaterials in the UK.
Speaker 1: So you've got your sheep, you've got extra wool left
Speaker 1: over from the textile industry, and then you've got your seaweed.
Speaker 1: Nobody's really using that. You press all that together with
Speaker 1: your with your earthen agent in the brick, and this
Speaker 1: makes a much stronger brick. This is the thing that
Speaker 1: is reminding me of other than Minecraft, is settlers of Catana. Suddenly,
Speaker 1: suddenly sheep are becoming a building resource. Yeah, you don't
Speaker 1: need that brick tile, you can just get some sheep
Speaker 1: and some well, I guess there is no seaweed time. Well,
Speaker 1: but you can turn your sheep into bricks. That this
Speaker 1: is okay, I'm seeing the conversion there right. Uh. Well,
Speaker 1: another thing, You could turn your sheep into bricks made
Speaker 1: of animal blood. Wow, so you could that is the thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you could build a cathede you roll out of animal blood.
Speaker 1: Pretty sure, there's a nick cave and the bad seed
Speaker 1: song coming out from here. Okay. So no, I want
Speaker 1: to say that I think this experiment is not necessarily
Speaker 1: the future. I really doubt we're going to have buildings
Speaker 1: made entirely out of animal blood, except maybe as an
Speaker 1: art project. But it's just too good of a principle
Speaker 1: not to mention since it has been demonstrated the bricks
Speaker 1: are made of animal blood. In two thousand twelve, uh,
Speaker 1: there were some news stories about a British architect named
Speaker 1: Jack Monroe who decided to experiment with creating building materials
Speaker 1: out of about the ickeyst form of bio waste. You
Speaker 1: can imagine fresh blood from slaughtered animals, and so this
Speaker 1: kind of makes sense in a way. Actually, animal blood
Speaker 1: is a prolific industrial byproduct that often goes to waste,
Speaker 1: just discarded or incinerated and blood has components that encourage
Speaker 1: bonding under the right circumstances. Like so, blood in the
Speaker 1: past has been used as a type of glue um,
Speaker 1: and so you look at that and you say, well,
Speaker 1: maybe we could get some full, some some utility out
Speaker 1: of this. And so Monroe claimed that he could make strong,
Speaker 1: waterproof bricks with the following process. You mix fresh animal
Speaker 1: blood with with an acid called E D t A,
Speaker 1: which is a preservative agent. Not going to try to
Speaker 1: pronounce the entire chemical name unless Jonathan, do you want
Speaker 1: to try to say it? Man, I'm just looking at
Speaker 1: it right now. Ask me again at the end of
Speaker 1: the show. Ethylene dia mine to tapped for. It's almost there, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: once you get you get to ethylena mine tetracetic acid,
Speaker 1: ethylene diamine tetracetic acid. Not bad, yeah, not bad. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So there you go. It's a preservative. It's used to
Speaker 1: prevent the blood from growing some organisms in it which
Speaker 1: you wouldn't want in the walls of your house, not necessarily.
Speaker 1: And then you mix that blood with sand and then
Speaker 1: you bake the mixture and you don't have to bake
Speaker 1: it very hot seven degrees Celcie seventy degrees cels. Yes,
Speaker 1: is good enough. That will work and will coagulate the
Speaker 1: proteins in the blood. It holds the sand together in Bam,
Speaker 1: you have a brick. Wow, somebody should somebody should make
Speaker 1: something out of these bricks. This is really important, you guys.
Speaker 1: I I wear a lot of black eyeliners sometimes, and
Speaker 1: I absolutely need to see this in action. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: I'm just every horror movie I've ever seen is starting
Speaker 1: to come to mind right now, that too, especially the
Speaker 1: ghost ones where the walls are bleeding. Um. But obviously
Speaker 1: that's not what would happen with this stuff. That it
Speaker 1: would all that would be the binding agent, just as
Speaker 1: cement was with concrete. It's not like it would be
Speaker 1: in any sort of liquid form. It would be completely solid. Uh.
Speaker 1: It is an interesting point again, like the idea being
Speaker 1: that if you have this byproduct that otherwise is going
Speaker 1: to waste, if you can put it to use, isn't
Speaker 1: that better than just throwing it out or incinerating it?
Speaker 1: Now it comes down to, the uh, the kind of
Speaker 1: stereotypical thing you would say out the the settlers of
Speaker 1: America versus the Native Americans. The idea that the Native
Speaker 1: Americans would use the entire buffalo. That's something that you
Speaker 1: if you study the frontier stories of America, you often
Speaker 1: hear that. Oh yeah, and it's even kind of popular
Speaker 1: within the food movement these days. Is a return from
Speaker 1: from you know, like snout to tail kind of dining
Speaker 1: where if you're going to to kill an animal in
Speaker 1: order to eat something, I mean a make it tasty
Speaker 1: and and be use all the parts, even the weird
Speaker 1: ones that people, especially in America these days, aren't used
Speaker 1: to eating anymore. Yeah, So, I you know, it reminds
Speaker 1: me actually of a story I saw that we had
Speaker 1: a House to works Now article about recently, which is
Speaker 1: using rejected tomatoes for energy, right, right, the idea of
Speaker 1: being able to use something good enough to eat using
Speaker 1: something that that for example, a tomato that has has
Speaker 1: burst through the you know, when you're harvesting it, you
Speaker 1: damage the tomato. You can't sell that, right, So but
Speaker 1: if you can still make use of it, then that's
Speaker 1: great because you're taking something that was once waste and
Speaker 1: turning it into a resource. So, uh, while this definitely
Speaker 1: is hitting me in certain psychological ways because I find
Speaker 1: it kind of creepy just based upon my own personal feelings.
Speaker 1: I totally appreciate the fact that, again, it's a waste
Speaker 1: not want not kind of approach to creating building materials. Now,
Speaker 1: we were just covering a small slice of potential future
Speaker 1: building materials, specifically ones that have a biological component to them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, we could do whole episodes probably on building
Speaker 1: materials featuring editions of graphine or carbon nanotubes, polymers, getting
Speaker 1: back into more of the the various advanced plastics that
Speaker 1: are up there, advanced ceramics, yeah, yeah, ero gel yes,
Speaker 1: aerojil is really fascinating stuff too. So we've got a
Speaker 1: lot of other topics in this realm that we will
Speaker 1: cover in the future. Obviously we're not we'll come back
Speaker 1: to this. Yeah, we're not gonna do. I don't think
Speaker 1: we're gonna do like three months of future of building materials,
Speaker 1: but we will occasionally revisit this stuff. But that leads
Speaker 1: me to another question. Guys, if you have a specific
Speaker 1: type of topic, or maybe it's a large one like
Speaker 1: building materials, and you would like to hear us start
Speaker 1: to do a series on that, or maybe it's something
Speaker 1: very particular and specific, just go ahead and send us
Speaker 1: a question, but in order for us to be able
Speaker 1: to answer it, we have to be able to read it.
Speaker 1: So use this email address f W Thinking at how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com, or drop us a line on
Speaker 1: Twitter or Facebook. At Twitter we are FW Thinking. You
Speaker 1: can search FW thinking and Facebook. Our page will pop
Speaker 1: right up. You can leave us a message there and
Speaker 1: we will talk to you again really soon. For more
Speaker 1: on this topic in the future of technology, visit forward
Speaker 1: thinking dot com, brought to you by Toyota Let's Go
Speaker 1: Places