Concrete is the world’s most important building material today – and will remain so. With special additives, construction chemicals improve its properties and reduce the amount of CO2.
Environmental and Sustainability Aspects
Comprehensively optimised:
modern concrete admixtures increase performance and CO2 savings
More than 10 billion tonnes of concrete are produced and used worldwide every year – making it the most important building material of our time. Concrete has always been developed further and its original formula of cement, water and an aggregate of sand and gravel has changed. Today, the original three ingredients are supplemented by intelligent concrete admixtures.
These liquid or powder additives change the properties of concrete. They can, for example, delay or accelerate the hardening time of fresh concrete and improve workability, but also increase the resistance, durability, and strength of hardened concrete. This makes them indispensable aids, especially in the production of ready-mixed concrete or precast concrete; or they enable new compositions of concrete that provide a significant CO2 reduction.
Admixtures play a key role in optimising the environmental and sustainability credentials of concrete but it is equally important that admixtures themselves are safe to use and not harmful to the environment and the products into which they are incorporated.