Progressive Planet announces superb compressive strength for new low carbon cement

In an exciting development for the building materials sector, Progressive Planet Solutions has announced remarkable results from recent compressive strength tests of PozPyro, a new cement alternative. Designed in collaboration with Pyrogenesis Canada, PozPyro aims to provide a partial replacement alternative for Portland cement.

PozPyro, a supplementary cementing material (SCM), was developed to partially replace traditional Portland cement, using plasma technology to transform quartz silica, a widely available material, into a SCM, without off gassing CO₂ from the production process. This comes at a critical time, as the cement industry seeks more sustainable practices without compromising quality or performance. Portland cement emits substantial amounts of CO₂ during its production.

After rigorous testing, which involved preparing four separate batches of cement mortar cubes, the results are in: PozPyro’s Strength Activity Index (SAI) averaged 108.75% at seven days, surpassing traditional cements in early strength. The SAI is an industry standard for measuring the compressive strength of cement mortar cubes. This result means that the PozPyro material outperformed a cement only control mix by over 8%.

The early success of PozPyro signals a significant step forward in creating more greenhouse gas friendly building materials. As Canada moves towards shutting down coal-fired power plants by 2030, the need for alternatives to fly ash, a common SCM, becomes more pressing. PozPyro not only fills this gap but does so by tapping into one of the earth’s most abundant materials, crystalline silica, offering a promising and sustainable solution for the future of construction.

Steve Harpur, CEO of Progressive Planet, expressed enthusiasm over the results, highlighting that SCMs typically tend to outperform traditional cements after 28 days of curing, making PozPyro’s early performance especially noteworthy. “Mortar cubes need to possess 75% of the strength of the control cube at seven days to pass this ASTM test, so we are delighted that the average strength was 108.75%”, stated Harpur. “The results of our first batch were so good that we decided to run an additional three batches to confirm these results”, added Harpur.

Furthermore, PozPyro demonstrated excellent workability, with water demand rates between 99% and 109%, ensuring it is easy to use in various concrete applications.

“It is uncommon to see SCMs exceed the seven-day strength of the control Portland, so we are excited to see better strength while concurrently possessing excellent water demand numbers”, said Steve Gurney, President of PLAN.

“These results are impressive, and underscore yet again the transformative nature of plasma in producing materials, in both an economically and environmentally beneficial manner, key to heavy industry”, said Mr. P. Peter Pascali, CEO and President of PyroGenesis. “Our experience over the past few years in developing new ways to use plasma to process silica quartz into valuable end products continues to lead to a variety of unique and interesting outputs, with PozPyro being the most recent example. The cement industry is a major target for us, and we have high expectations for the PozPyro green cement additive material we have developed with Progressive Planet.”

All four batches of mortar cubes will also undergo 28-day SAI tests with the results being available sometime after 29 April 2024.

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Read the article online at: https://www.worldcement.com/the-americas/16042024/progressive-planet-announces-superb-compressive-strength-for-new-low-carbon-cement/