FLOORS WITHOUT JOINTS - Five systems that promise to reduce or eliminate contraction joints and cracks.
Floors constructed using shrinkage-compensating concrete stand up well in operations with high volume, high traffic, and heavy traffic with small, hard wheels. Joints in industrial floors are the source of many long-term durability problems. So reducing the number of joints, or eliminating them entirely, will produce more durable slabs and happier owners. Unfortunately, a typical slab would....
Transparent solar panels that can cover windows reach record efficiency
Transparent solar panels, that could one day be used to generate renewable energy from buildings, have reached a record-breaking efficiency of 8 per cent, researchers have said. A team from the University of Michigan said they had also achieved 43.3 per cent transparency with their organic, carbon-based design rather than using conventional silicon. Although the cells have a ....
Photovoltaic ‘paint’ could be applied to cars and homes
Korean researchers have demonstrated that it is possible to create efficient large-area organic photovoltaic cells, opening the door to applications such as plastic-based photovoltaic paint. The team from the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) has developed a high-efficiency, large-area organic solution processable solar cell – formed by coating a surface ....
Low carbon aluminium for construction: building back better
With businesses re-assessing their attitudes to climate change, they are building new infrastructure in a way which supports the low-carbon transition As we navigate through the COVID-19 pandemic, governments are urging businesses to participate in a "green recovery" whereby sustainability is prioritised and put at the centre of the rebuilding of global economies. T....
Britpave, the British Cementitious Paving Association, is advocating the use of titanium dioxide to make concrete roads counteract traffic fumes.
Titanium dioxide (TiO2) has a range of everyday applications from food colouring to UV-resistant skin creams. We reported recently that Bouygues had signed a partnership with paint company Airlite, which uses TiO2 as an ingredient to turn pollution in the atmosphere back into harmless atmospheric gasses and salts. Britpave says the same ingredient could be used on ....
Storing energy in red bricks
Red bricks — some of the world’s cheapest and most familiar building materials — can be converted into energy storage units that can be charged to hold electricity, like a battery, according to new research from Washington University in St. Louis. Brick has been used in walls and buildings for thousands of years, but rarely has been found fit for any other u....