The Texas Department of Transportation is now using Pozzoslag green cement, a green cement that replaces 60 percent of Portland cement, to repave it’s interstate highways, on the I-45 from Houston to Conroe and large swaths of the I-2 in McAllen.
The state has slowly been switching over to using this new type of cement for some fairly large projects, such as for the making of the runways at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport. Pozzoslag will also be used for the I-35 expansion all the way through central Austin and Travis County.
Utah-based Eco Material Technologies has produced more than one million tons of PozzoSlag since 2011. The sustainable cement alternative is made with upcycled coal combustion waste and is manufactured at room temperature with nearly zero carbon. The plant is also expanding its current capacity so it can produce over 165,000 tons of their cement per year.
Pozzoslag is now being used for large-scale building projects, with Texas being at the forefront. Several major freeways and airports have adopted it as a primary building material.
Various manufacturers in the U.S., such as one that manufactures concrete pipes, prefers this sustainable cement due to its performance. In many places in Texas, this sustainable cement is not being marketed as being eco-friendly or sustainable, but rather as having better performance than regular cement, such as for use in roads.
At this time, PozzoSlag cement is also priced lower than Portland cement, yet is also more eco-friendly. According to current research, every ton of Portland cement manufactured emits up to 1,800 lbs of CO2 during the manufacturing process, compared to the 20 lbs emitted by PozzoSlag.
