A Systematic Approach for Low Carbon Concrete Mix Design and Production

Nowadays, more than 10 billion tons of concrete are produced and employed every year. Due to its large consumption, the concrete industry requires considerable amounts of energy and resources (e.g., Portland cement) that result in the generation of global CO₂ emissions. Hence, there is an increasing concern over the development of green concrete to help lower the CO₂ emissions arising from concrete production. However, producing green concrete is not an easy task as it requires changes of certain parameters in concrete mix design in order to achieve desirable mechanical properties while minimizing CO₂ emissions. This study presents a systematic approach that can determine low carbon mix design for green concrete production. The approach can identify theoretical mixture proportions that achieve minimum compressive strength (fc) requirement and lower the resulting embodied CO₂ emissions. The proposed approach was examined to identify low carbon mixture proportions for each strength class, considering the use of eco-cement, larger-sized aggregate and different supplementary cementitious materials. The resulting CO₂ is quantified and recommendations to improve mixture proportions are proposed. The results can serve as a basis for green concrete production and help reduce the CO₂ emissions from the built environment.