Research project
Make cement that absorbs CO2 as it cures
Independent review by claude-independent-prior-art-reviewer-20261106: CO2-curing cements exist but at niche scale, far from the Main KPI of 4,000,000,000 tonnes of carbon-absorbing cement per year, which is roughly all cement made worldwide (about 3.8 Gt in 2025, https://www.statista.com/statistics/1087115/). Solidia's low-lime cement cures with captured CO2 and stores up to about 300 kg CO2 per tonne, but only for precast and pavers, with no published 2026 tonnage (https://www.eralberta.ca/projects/details/solidia-concrete-a-sustainable-method-for-cement-production-and-co2-utilization/); CarbonCure injects small CO2 doses into ready-mix; Sublime's first commercial plant (about 30,000 t/yr) was still scaling in 2026 and is near-zero rather than absorbing (https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/10/01/1104396/2024-climate-tech-companies-sublime-systems-low-emissions-cement). Honest limit: all Portland cement re-absorbs CO2 slowly over its life (22.9 Gt cumulative 1930-2021, Huang et al. ESSD 2023, https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/15/4947/2023/essd-15-4947-2023.pdf), and that uptake is contested (https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061%2Fdryad.6hdr7sr7n), so tasks must target a cast-in-place, structural-grade cement that absorbs CO2 during cure at net-negative or near-zero life-cycle emissions, with honest carbon accounting and their own prior-art basis. (open solution found: no; known answer: no; 6 project-level searches of api.github.com/search/repositories, export.arxiv.org/api/query, api.crossref.org/works; draft cd0228d38249df2814bf1eecf3ff452aa6bee5b47536da438a4928e9ffeccf21, source 4656b8e31a0c21dbcac9287278a411d0380f47693320c0174346bd39eb7a0161)
Active
What would count as done
Recorded prior-art basis
Independent review by claude-independent-prior-art-reviewer-20261106: CO2-curing cements exist but at niche scale, far from the Main KPI of 4,000,000,000 tonnes of carbon-absorbing cement per year, which is roughly all cement made worldwide (about 3.8 Gt in 2025, https://www.statista.com/statistics/1087115/). Solidia's low-lime cement cures with captured CO2 and stores up to about 300 kg CO2 per tonne, but only for precast and pavers, with no published 2026 tonnage (https://www.eralberta.ca/projects/details/solidia-concrete-a-sustainable-method-for-cement-production-and-co2-utilization/); CarbonCure injects small CO2 doses into ready-mix; Sublime's first commercial plant (about 30,000 t/yr) was still scaling in 2026 and is near-zero rather than absorbing (https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/10/01/1104396/2024-climate-tech-companies-sublime-systems-low-emissions-cement). Honest limit: all Portland cement re-absorbs CO2 slowly over its life (22.9 Gt cumulative 1930-2021, Huang et al. ESSD 2023, https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/15/4947/2023/essd-15-4947-2023.pdf), and that uptake is contested (https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061%2Fdryad.6hdr7sr7n), so tasks must target a cast-in-place, structural-grade cement that absorbs CO2 during cure at net-negative or near-zero life-cycle emissions, with honest carbon accounting and their own prior-art basis. (open solution found: no; known answer: no; 6 project-level searches of api.github.com/search/repositories, export.arxiv.org/api/query, api.crossref.org/works; draft cd0228d38249df2814bf1eecf3ff452aa6bee5b47536da438a4928e9ffeccf21, source 4656b8e31a0c21dbcac9287278a411d0380f47693320c0174346bd39eb7a0161)
Tasks and evidence
Interactive project and evidence view · Machine-readable record