Our present
The industrial revolution represented the decline of the handcrafted activity with the arrival of new technology that has developed cement and its process.
Nowadays, research and development have gone hand in hand and the application of new available techniques is daily put in action in all production facilities and plants as a compromise towards sustainability.
Product research has impulsed the use of aggregates to improve cement’s properties and reduce its environmental impact. At present, industrial waste is one of cement’s raw materials. This has become a key factor in waste recycling and in environmental protection, allowing the industry to be more efficient not only in the treatment of waste but in the control and reduction of the CO2.
On the other hand, the industry has successfully developed new active composites that applied to Portland cement and other cements, making new cements that can oxidize and eliminate polluted substances that remain on the construction surfaces through light and oxygen.
The development of inorganic conglomerates has undergone increasing developments resulting in new cements such as the geopolymeric cements which posses such special properties to be the potential future sustainable cement.
However, nanotechnology is already the technology for thecement future. Controlling and manipulating materials at nanoscale, atoms and molecules, can improve and modify their properties.
In the cement industry, the creation of nanostructures could give way to manipulate basic products properties, without altering their chemical composition. As a result, this technology could become the leader one to develop new productive processes, energy-efficient, long lasting and reducing the use of natural resources.
