The cement of the cities protects the Earth!

The…
“sea” -or rather the “jungle”- the cement that surrounds us, it absorbs to a large extent the carbon dioxide, produced during the production of cement from the industries. In this rather unexpected conclusion is reached for the first time, a new international scientific research. In this way, the “sea” of the cement works like the real sea and the jungle of greenery, which also absorb large quantities of carbon, acting as a counterweight to climate change.
The beneficial side
The study highlights the unseen and unappreciated until today – beneficial side of the concrete construction, which in their way are helping in the fight against climate change (after, of course, previously, the cement companies have drastically increase carbon emissions in the atmosphere).
Researchers from China, the USA and several european countries, led by professor Dabo Guan of the University of East anglia calculated that the cement of the Earth, which has been used in every kind of buildings, roads and other infrastructure, absorbing around one billion tonnes of atmospheric carbon each year.
The data
It is estimated that between 1930-2013 produced more than 76 billion tons of cement worldwide and, at the same time, about 4.5 gigatonnes (billion tonnes) of carbon were absorbed by the cement. This quantity is the 43% to 44% of the carbon dioxide that is released into the atmosphere during the industrial production of cement during the same period.
Therefore, every year, the manufactures of cement to remove from the atmosphere almost half of the carbon dioxide created during the production of the. The carbon dioxide emissions during the production of cement constitute the bulk (about 90%) of the total carbon dioxide emissions from all industries, and around 5% of global anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions (the vast majority comes from the burning of fossil fuels). Before 1982, the more carbon dioxide is absorbed by the cement in Europe and in the united states, but after 1994, because of the construction “explosion” in China, the cement of this country absorbs more carbon dioxide than all other countries together. The study is published in the journal “Nature Geoscience”.
The absorbance
The cement plaster has the greatest absorbance in carbon, but the more cement -around 70% of total world production – it is used for concrete (concrete). As fast to take down a building, that is, the smaller is the circle of life, so accelerating the absorption of carbon dioxide, because it is exposed to the atmosphere larger sections of cement. This is particularly true in China where the average building “lives” for around 35 years, compared with 65 to 70 years in Europe and in the USA.
Between 1990-2013, it is estimated that the absorption of carbon dioxide from the cement is increasing with a rapid average annual rate of 5.8%, as more and more land occupied by the cement in the world, while more and more old concrete buildings demolished. In the same period, emissions during the production of cement increased at a slightly lower average annual rate of 5.4%. Therefore, as the years pass, the contribution of the cement in the absorption of carbon dioxide is expected to increase.
But the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of the UN, which so far takes into account only the emissions of carbon dioxide during the production of cement, unaware of the large quantities of carbon dioxide which then the cement absorbs again. The absorption of this is a slow chemical process and takes place, as it gradually wears away the cement and the carbon dioxide, starting from the surface, it spreads more and more deeply into the resources that exist within the structural material.

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