Latest Edition of National Concrete Consortium Newsletter Now Available Online
Print this Article | Send to Colleague
The Winter 2024 newsletter of the National Concrete Consortium includes the following items:
• Toward Performance-Engineered Curing: The Winter 2024 NC² Moving Advancements into Practice (MAP) Brief from the NC² Resource Library reviews the current state of membrane-forming curing compounds for concrete pavement, provides recommendations for improving curing and discusses emerging technologies to allow performance-engineered curing.
• FHWA Announces Details of Low-Carbon Transportation Materials Program: On March 12, FHWA released the details of the Low-Carbon Transportation Materials (LCTM) Program. Established under Section 60506 of the Inflation Reduction Act, the program aims to increase the use of materials that have “substantially lower levels of embodied greenhouse gas emissions” as defined by the Environmental Protection Agency. Currently, $1.2 billion in funding is available to state departments of transportation (DOTs), the District of Columbia, and the territory of Puerto Rico through a request for applications (RFA). Additionally, FHWA plans to release another $800 million for eligible non-state DOTs through a separate notice of funding opportunity (NOFO) in the near future.
• CP Tech Center Releases Guide for Reducing the Cradle-To-Gate Embodied Carbon Emissions of Paving Concrete: Transportation agencies across the nation are striving to quantify and reduce the cradle-to-gate embodied carbon emissions of their pavement materials - the embodied carbon emissions incurred during the production of paving concrete before it leaves the concrete plant. The Guide for Reducing the Cradle-to-Gate Embodied Carbon Emissions of Paving Concrete offers several practical and implementation-ready strategies for material selection and proportioning that transportation agencies, contractors and concrete suppliers can use to reduce the cradle-to-gate embodied carbon emissions of paving concrete in readily quantifiable ways.
• Coal Creek Expands Waste Recycling Partnership: Rainbow Energy Center expanded a partnership between Utah-based Eco Material Technologies and North Dakota’s Coal Creek Station in order to start recycling three of the station’s main waste streams. One of the forms of recycling includes using about 400,000 tons of bottom ash for concrete mixes annually for the next 25 years.
• Construction of Low-Cracking High-Performance Bridge Decks Incorporating New Technology Phase II: A research project sponsored by the Kansas Department of Transportation documented the construction and evaluation of 12 bridge decks constructed from 2016 to 2021 in Minnesota and Kansas using internally cured, low-cracking, high-performance concrete (IC-LC-HPC). The report discusses the effects of construction practices on cracking and the use of bridge deck overlays.
• Effect of Low and Moderate Recycled Concrete Aggregate Replacement Levels on Concrete Properties: A research project sponsored by the Minnesota Department of Transportation investigated the effects of incorporating recycled concrete aggregate (RCA) at low replacement levels on the properties of concrete. Four different RCA sources were used, each with different aggregate properties. The research found that using up to 15% of an RCA with reasonable values of absorption capacity and percent fines would not negatively impact most concrete properties. The report provides an outline for future research to develop a specification defining what constitutes reasonable values for RCA properties.
Click here for the newsletter which contains links to each of the above reports.
