Construction firms BAM and Weber Beamix have begun building the world’s longest 3D printed concrete pedestrian bridge in the Netherlands.

Simply named ‘The Bridge Project’, the initiative is being co-commissioned by Rijkswaterstaat (the Dutch Directorate-General for Public Works and Water Management), with contributions from designer Michiel van der Kley and the Eindhoven University of Technology. Although it will be constructed in Nijmegen, the bridge is currently being printed in the city of Eindhoven, where BAM and Weber’s 3D printing facility is located.

Once complete, the concrete structure will stand at a length of 29.5m (almost 97 feet), reportedly breaking the world record for the longest 3D printed bridge. According to CNN, the current record is held by Tsinghua University for its 86-foot concrete bridge in Shanghai.

Ushering in a new wave of design

The employment of digital design in construction is expected to enable a new wave of novel building concepts, all while making the process more affordable and time-efficient. With most conventionally manufactured concrete structures requiring the use of formworks, van der Kley and Rijkswaterstaat sought a design that would be impossible without 3D printing in a bid to test the true potential of the technology. Conceived in the studio of van der Kley, the freeform bridge is intended to represent the future of 3D printing in the construction sector.

Naturally, the use of 3D printing also brings with it a new set of challenges, such as structural safety, accurate load analysis, and material suitability. To rationalize the initial design, the project’s structural engineers, Witteveen+Bos, commissioned Summum Engineering to create a parametric model of the bridge. The model conformed the original design to a set of structural constraints, segmented it based on printing specifications developed by the Eindhoven University of Technology, and generated an optimized internal geometry for the bridge.

This enabled the team to determine three different outputs. Firstly, the external surfaces of the structure, which were used as inputs for the 3D Autodesk Revit models; secondly, the internal and external meshes, which were used for finite element analysis calculations; and thirdly, the printing paths for the concrete 3D printers.

Following an initial test bridge which was 3D printed by the Eindhoven University of Technology, BAM and Weber Beamix are now in the process of erecting the final bridge in Nijmegen. The partners chose Nijmegen for the landmark project because it was named the Green Capital of Europe in 2018, falling in line with the bridge’s eco-friendly philosophy.

Europe leading the charge

The Nijmegen bridge has less than a month to go until completion, and Weber Beamix already has plans to 3D print four more bridges across the Netherlands. Although construction 3D printing has cropped up in all four corners of the world, such as in the U.S. with residential buildings and even Thailand with co-working spaces, the Europeans seem to be leading the charge in terms of sheer project numbers.

Late last year, Germany-based construction company PERI Group 3D printed the world’s first on-site apartment building in Wallenhausen, Germany. The three-floor residential structure was printed using Danish 3D printer OEM COBOD’s concrete 3D printing technology, and consists of five rentable apartment units.

Elsewhere, in the Massa Lombarda region of Northern Italy, 3D printer manufacturer WASP recently completed 3D printing a unique eco-friendly organic house. Named ‘TECLA,’ the fully-fabricated dwelling has been built as a proof-of-concept and an initial blueprint for future sustainable housing models.

 

Source: 3D Printing Industry

 

London’s largest purpose-built rental community – Greenford Quay in the London Borough of Ealing – is ready to be unveiled by leading developer Greystar, one of the main players in the ever-growing Build to Rent (BTR) market.

Greystar has soft-launched the scheme since November 2019, when the first residents moved in, but is now ready to offically reveal the development to the media.

The US-based firm originally entered the European market in 2013 to acquire and develop purpose-built student accommodation and rental housing, and launched the ‘Greystar U.K. Multifamily Fund I’ in May 2019, a new flagship fund series to develop purpose-built rental housing properties in the UK with a target raise of £750 million.

The developer has previously stated its goal of delivering 10,000 BTR units in London by 2022, and the Greenford Quay development on the border of Greenford and Northolt – two historic London suburbs – will ultimately deliver 2,118 new homes overlooking the Grand Union Canal.

With the first building of the development completed in under 19 months, thanks to innovative modular construction methods, Greystar argues it is setting a new standard in the UK ‘for community-led rental properties’ combined with ‘sustainable operational excellence’.

The restored Art Deco building which forms the focal point of the development – known as Tillermans – is made up of 379 apartments (studio, one, two and three-bedroom) and faces onto a landscaped public square, with ‘extensive landscaping and water features’.

The first residents have already moved in and been established in the building for some time, and Greystar says that demand is proving to be strong. So far, existing and prospective residents have singled out the service and security provided by the on-site management team, as well as the attractiveness of Greenford Quay’s various amenities.

Greenford Quay, unlike many other developments in the UK that were originally for sale and then converted into rental housing, was designed specifically with renting in mind from the outset.

Greystar’s in-house team has led this approach, tailoring each new development to meet the needs of prospective tenants. The developer is directly in charge of operating the new community and supporting its residents, with a dedicated on-site team providing customer service that includes management, maintenance, leasing and events services. Various events have already been held for residents and the local community, while street food vendors have occasionally appeared in the landscaped public areas.

Greenford Quay is aiming to become a new destination and established community with regular on-site family-friendly events.

Todd Marler, senior director of multifamily operations in UK & IE at Greystar, said: “Greenford Quay is a significant milestone for Greystar in Europe, as it is the first development we have overseen from inception to delivery. There is a severe shortage of high-quality homes across our major cities and we are delivering a professionally managed solution that we hope will open people’s eyes to the long-term benefits of renting, particularly in the UK.”

Paul Naylor, community manager at Greenford Quay, added: “Greenford Quay has been thoughtfully designed to build a sense of community by fostering interactions inside and outside the buildings. It is a delight to see our on-site team interacting with our new residents – together helping to bring the development to life. Our aim is to provide a level of service that renters rarely experience in the UK, but certainly deserve. The flexibility we provide is appealing to residents, as they can enjoy one of our secure, high-quality homes and all the benefits of our lively community for as long as they want.”

What was there before?

Greenford Quay is the redevelopment of the 20-acre waterfront site previously occupied by GlaxoSmithKline and the Sunblest Bakery. For a long while before the development began, the area had been neglected, half-derelict and overgrown, with numerous disused buildings serving no obvious purpose.

After many years of speculation about what the area would be turned into – including talks of a cinema complex or shopping centre – Greystar acquired the sites in January 2016 and consulted extensively with Ealing Council, the Greater London Authority, local businesses, residents and other stakeholders to develop proposals for modern canal-side living in the heart of Greenford, bringing the derelict site back to life.

The finished development is set to provide a new health centre, primary school, shops and restaurants that, once complete, ‘will benefit the neighbouring community’, while also playing a part in addressing London’s housing shortage.

Work on the first building began in June 2018 and was finished 19 months later – with the speed of the build possible thanks to the innovative methods of construction used.

The entire development is set to be completed far quicker than a ‘for sale’ scheme, following the decision to deliver it using modular methods in partnership with Tide Construction.

The ‘high-quality’ residential units are largely built off-site and slotted into the buildings, which significantly reduces construction time, with a reduction of up to 80% of typical construction traffic on-site.

This, in turn, lessens the disruption to local residents and the building’s carbon footprint through greatly minimising the construction waste normally generated.

What does Greenford offer?

One of London’s most popular commuter towns, Greenford is surrounded by Northolt, Wembley, Perivale and Harrow and is arguably best known for its Central Line tube station. This station sits in Zone 4, with Zone 1 accessible in 20 minutes and Westfield London in Shepherd’s Bush even closer than that.

Pre-Covid, Greenford station was topping four million annual entries and exits and, as well as Underground services on the Central Line, it is also the terminus of the National Rail Greenford Branch Line.

Greenford Quay is about a seven-minute walk from the station and aims to offer the best of town and country life. It is surrounded by nature and only a short stroll from the ancient woodland at Horsenden Hill and Paradise Fields – a rich natural habitat famous for grassland, ponds, reed beds, lagoons and wildflower meadows.

The area surrounding Greenford Quay is a mixture of nature, residential and industrial, with the open land of Greenford originally attracting various renowned British industries that also benefitted from the railway and canal in terms of trade and connectivity.

With a past rooted in wheat and tea – the area was previously home to Tetley’s headquarters and Lyons’ factories, as well as bread-making facilities – Greystar is aiming to reimagine the site for modern 21st-century living.

*All images courtesy of Greystar and Billy Bolton

Source: Property Investor Today

Two of the world’s leading experts on water placemaking and floating architecture have collaborated on a masterplan for Charlestown Navy Yard in Boston which will deliver a new residential neighbourhood on the water as well as a waterside public amenity. The pair, Koen Olthuis, Principal of Waterstudio in the Netherlands, and Richard Coutts, Principal of London-based Baca Architects, were invited onto the design team by Boston’s 6M Development who are seeking to implement the first floating housing community off the East Coast of America. The intention is that the development will provide a template for climate adaptive and resilient affordable homes across the Hudson Harbour and along the entire U.S. coastline- and indeed to any other coastal city where land costs are high.

The scheme centres on repurposing a long-dormant pier by selectively demolishing and retaining parts to create four sturdy islands that will become anchoring points for floating homes, providing Boston with much-needed housing economically and efficiently. The homes will be built on top of large floating pontoons tethered to the islands by flexible moorings, allowing the homes to rise and fall with the tide. The pier development will thus work with the dynamic tidal range of Boston’s Inner Harbour while also achieving a canal experience reminiscent of Amsterdam. Sustainability is key to the scheme which is aiming for 138 LEED Certified Gold and will include a water heat exchange, acting as a renewable “blue battery”, to provide heating and cooling together with solar pergolas on the rooftops which will generate sustainable energy.

The homes will be built using modern methods of construction consisting of structural highly insulated prefabricated timber panels. They will offer four levels of accommodation with three and a half sitting above the waterline, no higher than 12 metres above the existing pier height. Half the lowest level will be below the waterline, with windows above, and will sit within the flotation unit to provide buoyancy to the rest of the structure. There will be a combination of townhouses, duplexes and apartments with balconies and roof terraces and easy access to a boat mooring, designed to adapt to different mix of units as the evolving market dictates.

Each island will have its own character and offer different types of amenities from numerous pocket parks, wetland fringes providing natural habitats, a public harbour walk and canal-side pathways to event spaces, retail, cafes and restaurants at the water’s edge and a gourmet market. The development will be pedestrian access only, served by water taxis and private boats.

“It will be a wonderful neighbourhood and a catalyst to activate this stretch of the harbour and possibly beyond,” says Richard Coutts. “We are not only creating homes in strategic locations but are activating the waterfront for the public and providing new green spaces. The different identities of each island will mean that the total development will be greater than the sum of its individual parts.”

Koen Olthuis says: “Our scheme marks a tipping point for cities looking to unlock their water potential. With this project, Boston will be able to showcase the new philosophy of Rise of the Blue City in which water space is used to enhance liveability along the waterfront and to bring solutions to combat the effects of sea-level rise and urbanisation”.

The practices of Waterstudio and Baca have been collaborating recently on other projects nationally and internationally – from marina designs to hotels and floating hospitality and leisure.

About Baca Architects

Baca Architects was founded in 2003 by Richard Coutts with the aim of integrating landscape and low carbon technology to create beautiful and enduring developments.

www.baca.uk.com

 

About Waterstudio

Waterstudio is an architectural firm based in the Netherlands that is confronting the challenges of the problems posed by urbanisation and climate change.

www.waterstudio.nl

 

 

 

As the construction industry looks to power the post-Covid economic recovery, a new report by Turner and Townsend highlights that embedding sustainability strategies will be critical to strengthening the supply chain and achieving the country’s net zero targets.

The global professional services business’ latest UK Market Intelligence Report (UKMI) shows a cautiously positive outlook for the construction industry tempered by risks of inflationary pressure. But core to the sector’s medium and long term success will be how it deals with the need to decarbonise and build back greener.

The report argues that a concerted effort by the industry to focus on decarbonisation will not only support the environmental imperative to reach net zero, but it will also create a commercial case to do so too.

Looking specifically at the residential sector, the report suggests that there will be large scale options for cost neutral net zero retrofit schemes by the end of 2023. The challenge must be for new housing schemes to achieve the same targets where the marginal cost will effectively be nil, creating a major scale-up in delivery.

 

 

The UKMI also assesses the forward outlook for inflation. Showing that while inflationary pressure was balanced in 2020, with deflationary constraints on demand and construction activity offsetting the productivity impediments of social distancing and rising material costs, 2021 is due to tip towards inflation.

This is down to the expected increase in construction activity this year – though predicted demand is not evenly spread. High government infrastructure spending is behind Turner & Townsend’s prediction of a 1.5 percent increase in infrastructure tender prices in 2021 (up from 1.0 percent in 2020). But for real estate tender prices, a 0.0 percent inflation rate is expected (up from -2) as new orders remain weaker.

On its own, a quick uptick in inflation in an era of fragile finances could frustrate a build back better recovery, but the fragility of the wider supply chain and an industry still heavily propped up by government support are also cause for concern. With demand and output both set to increase, clients must therefore closely monitor their exposure to further supply chain disruption, insolvencies and cost increases. Resilience and capacity can be built into the supply chain with the right investment and innovation into green technologies, retrofitting and sustainable building to capitalise on the business opportunity around net zero.

Michael Grace, director in the Leeds office of Turner & Townsend, said: “The construction industry has a pivotal role to play in delivering a net zero carbon future in Yorkshire. We need to drive change, working with our customers and the supply chain to deliver sustainable outcomes.”

Source: The Business Desk

 

Leading data and analytics companies GlobalData and Marketscreener have reported a significant rise in the adoption of Digital Twins – virtual models of physical objects such as buildings, cars or infrastructure.

More industry sectors now recognise that by drawing on complementary tech and resources such as AI, the Internet of Things and ‘big data’, Digital Twins can build new products – and get them right first time.

They can also monitor existing assets, optimize maintenance, and reduce downtime, or check carbon emissions, nearby traffic flow, and even simulate an adverse weather object.

They are already revolutionizing industries including construction, energy, architecture, aerospace, automotive and transportation and the value in the new tech is reflected in its predicted growth: Markets & Markets estimates that the Digital Twin market will grow from $3.1 billion in 2020 to $48.2 billion per year by 2026, at an annual CAGR of 58%.

Kiran Raj, Principal Disruptive Tech Analyst at GlobalData, named COVID-19 and efficient integration as the reasons behind increased adoption: “Digital Twin technology has gained a lot of traction in the last few years due to accelerated digitalization across industries. It has become more valuable during the COVID-19 pandemic to help companies navigate the crisis.

“Start-ups have the capacity to provide off-the-shelf and bespoke Digital Twin solutions that enterprises in various industries such as construction, oil and gas, automotive and healthcare can quickly integrate into their business operations.”

 Construction-based Digital Twin specialist Cityzenith was named as market leader by GlobalData, and CEO Michael Jansen said:

“2020 and 2021 have been significant years for Cityzenith. Our Regulation A+ crowdfunding campaign recently surpassed the $2 million first goal, and we have welcomed over 1,000 new investors to the company since its launch, aided by our independent investment platform launched in December 2020.

“In the past year, we have partnered with the $500 million Orlando Sports + Entertainment District state-of-the-art redevelopment and earned a pioneering contract to create a multi-purpose Digital Twin for an ultra-luxury residential tower in the Middle East.”

Norwegian industrial combine Kongsberg was also named in the report and highlighted the Digital Twin trend, with executive VP of its DigitalOcean sector, Andreas Jagtøyen commenting:

“More customers have reached out to learn how the development of maritime Digital Twins is progressing, both related to autonomous shipping and solutions supporting the more efficient and safe operation of advanced equipment and machinery onboard the vessels.”

 

Extract from the Report:

Construction

 Digital Twins are being used to simulate the impact of operational, environmental, and financial data on large-scale construction projects. This enables construction companies to assess the performance of relevant infrastructure in real-time and adjust operations to optimize efficiency. US startup Cityzenith developed a Digital Twin platform SmartWorldPro to create a virtual replica of buildings and infrastructure to help clients design, develop and run projects at any scale.

 

 

 

Amsterdam studio Woonpioniers has hidden a prefabricated wooden cabin with large windows and tall, curving interiors within a forest glade in the Netherlands.

The modular dwelling, named Indigo, was designed for a couple who are leasing the rural site in Barchem and wanted a low-impact home that caters to a sustainable lifestyle.

It is the fourth cabin of this kind to have been built by Woonpioniers after the studio developed them to offer a highly customisable and affordable housing model that can be replicated anywhere.

The dwellings, all named Indigo, are built with a prefabricated laminated-timber structure to minimise waste, transportation, construction time and, in turn, environmental impact.

“At Woonpioniers we develop architectural concepts with which we burden the environment as little as possible,” the studio told Dezeen.

“We also think it is important to develop individual housing concepts that are rationally structured and therefore remain affordable but do not necessarily look exactly the same every time,” it continued.

“With Indigo, Woonpioniers aims to make personal architecture and a healthy way of building accessible to a wide audience.”

The Indigo cabins are designed to be highly adjustable, meaning their size is tailored to the specific needs and chosen site of the client.

However, each one utilises the same prefabricated elements that are combined to form spacious interiors, characterised by tall ceilings that curve down to meet the walls.

This distinctive curved interior is engineered to strengthen the corners of the cabin and negate the need for structural supports that would truncate the space – leaving an open, flexible interior.

“If you simply build two walls with a hood on top, the weight of the roof will push the walls out,” the studio explained.

“If you round the corners of the house, there is the possibility of strengthening them in such a way that all forces are properly absorbed without the space losing its unity.”

This particular Indigo cabin is sized to provide the client with ample space for a large, open living area and a two-storey “sleeping house” at the rear.

These two contrasting zones are divided by a lofty hallway, designed for the clients to host events while also helping to minimise the cabin’s heating requirements.

Externally, the cabin is finished with a prefabricated standing seam roof and stained larch wood cladding, while the interior walls are finished with spruce, complemented by a polished cement floor.

Various other material finishes are available for the cabins, but wood was chosen as the primary material for this home to create the feeling that it is “at one with the environment”.

This connection to the outside is furthered through the placement of large windows and areas of glazing, such as at the gable end of the living room.

Other materials used in the construction include cellulose insulation, wedged between the prefabricated beams, and the use of screws to fasten the modular elements to ensure their recyclability.

 

 

Loose prefabricated concrete blocks topped by a cross-laminated timber slab form the cabin’s foundation so that it can be easily removed at the end of the home’s useful life.

Each Indigo cabin is designed to be carbon-neutral in operation, reliant on electricity from renewable sources. This home uses solar panels on the roof of a nearby building, as the site itself is too shaded to generate enough electricity.

It also relies on an air-to-water heat pump for underfloor heating and utilises the ground’s thermal mass to naturally regulate internal temperatures.

Muji has also developed a prefabricated wooden home called Yō no Ie, or Plain House, which is designed to encourage indoor-outdoor living. Similarly to Indigo, the home is built without columns or fixed divisions to ensure flexibility and allow owners to reconfigure its layout to meet changing needs.

More recently, Studio Puisto launched a range of adaptable, prefabricated cabins called Space of Mind that can be built anywhere and used as anything from a garden office to a remote off-grid retreat.

Photography is by Henny van Belkom.

 

Source: Dezeen

Two years ago, CalMatters housing writer Matt Levin described a factory in Vallejo that was building housing modules that could quickly — and relatively inexpensively — be assembled into multi-story apartment houses.

Levin described the factory as more resembling an automobile assembly line than a construction site. “They build one floor approximately every two and a half hours,” Larry Pace, co-founder of Factory OS, told Levin. “It’s fast.”

Modular construction offers a potential solution to one of the most vexing aspects of California’s housing crisis — the extremely high costs of building apartments meant to house low- and moderate-income families.

Statewide, those costs average about $500,000 a unit, encompassing land costs, governmental red tape, ever-rising prices for materials and, finally, wages for unionized workers who build, plumb and electrify the apartments.

“Further inside the massive Vallejo plant, there’s a station for cabinets, a station for roofing and a station for plumbing and electrical wiring,” Levin wrote. “Station 33 looks like a furniture showroom not quite ready for the floor — washer, dryer and microwave included.

“From there the apartment pieces are wrapped and trucked to the construction site, where they’re assembled in a matter of days, not months.”

Pace said that his modules can be assembled into three- to five-story apartment buildings 40% more quickly and 20% less expensively than traditional construction, which means more bang for the buck.

Today, a Factory OS apartment house for 145 hitherto homeless residents is being assembled in downtown San Francisco in what appears to be proof of what Pace told Levin.

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Heather Knight described the project in a recent article, saying, “The project at 833 Bryant St. is being built faster and cheaper than the typical affordable housing development in San Francisco, the ones that notoriously drag on for six years or more and cost an average of $700,000 per unit. This project will take just three years and clock in at $383,000 per unit.”

In other words, by using modular construction San Francisco could supply twice as many units for the same money. So what’s not to like? Knight tells us what.

“At issue,” she writes, “is how the project was built so quickly: with modular units made in a Vallejo factory. Each unit was trucked across the Bay Bridge, strung from a crane and locked in place like a giant Lego creation. San Francisco unions don’t like the method because it leaves them out, but considering the city’s extreme homelessness crisis, City Hall can’t afford to toss the idea.”

Factory OS uses unionized workers, but through an agreement with the carpenters’ union, workers perform a variety of tasks on the housing assembly line, rather than having the work divvied up among specialists, and the company employs many former prison inmates.

Politically influential construction trades unions are pushing San Francisco’s city officials to make 833 Bryant St. a one-time event rather than the beginning of a trend.

Larry Mazzola Jr., president of the San Francisco Building and Construction Trades Council, is sending a letter to Mayor London Breed and city supervisors criticizing the project’s “mistakes and over-costs.”

“The quality is crap, to put it basically,” Mazzola told Knight “They don’t have plumbers doing the plumbing. They don’t have electricians doing electrical. They get them from San Quentin, and they’re not trained at all. We’re going to fight vigorously with the city not to do any more of these.”

Modular housing is not a panacea for California’s housing woes, but it deals with one major factor. The question is whether politicians will embrace it or strangle it.

Source: The OCR

 

 

Explosive “Blast Box” Contract Lays Foundations for UK Steel Construction System to Go Nuclear   –  US University Uses Steel Bricks™ Technology for Advanced Warhead Testing 

 

A pioneering UK-based steel construction system is on course to dominate the potentially lucrative global nuclear Small Modular Reactor (SMR) market following the successful delivery of a blast chamber contract with a leading US university.

The Steel Bricks™ modular construction system developed by Modular Walling Systems Ltd, based in Renfrewshire, Scotland, has been used to construct an Environmental Blast Chamber for the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Known as a ‘blast box’, the revolutionary ultra-strong three-metre cubed chamber is now being used for explosives testing as part of a research programme on advanced warhead technologies for the US Department of Defense.

The University of Illinois blast box uses the patented Steel Bricks™ modular construction system which comprises two steel face plates internally connected to create a ‘sandwich’ panel. The steel structure is then manufactured off-site as a single piece, before being filled with 72 tons of self-consolidating concrete in a continuous pour once installed. According to Dr. Stewart Gallocher, founding director of Modular Walling Systems, it is this proprietary process which gives the blast box its unique strength – as well as vastly reducing on-site time and labour costs – making it ideal for SMR construction, a market estimated to be worth US $1.2 trillion globally.

He explains: “The Steel Bricks™ system, with trademark diaphragm holes running through the webs, has been assembled in such a way that the concrete is poured through holes in the roof, flowing down the walls and filling the base mat before coming back up the walls and lining the ceiling – all in one continuous pour. This is a ‘first of a kind’ concept in the fast-emerging world of steel composite construction and proves that the Steel Bricks™ system can provide not only the walls and suspended floors or roofs in steel composite but most importantly a base mat. This takes away the need for conventional foundations, eliminating the traditional Achilles Heel of this form of construction which are the weak points of the base mat to wall connection.”

“Many attempts have been made during the past 25 years to devise simple, safe and rapid fabrication methods to internally connect steel faceplates. But most have lacked commercial application due to being too expensive and labour intensive. We have now proved we can successfully deliver a solution which is technologically proficient whilst providing significant cost and time saving benefits.”

The Environmental Blast Chamber was fabricated in the UK by Caunton Engineering, one of the UK’s leading structural steelworks manufacturers, at the company’s manufacturing headquarters in Nottingham before being shipped to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Now installed, the blast box is expected to deliver some impressive results, as testified by Professor Nick Glumac who leads the explosive testing and weapons research faculty at the University. He says: “The test facility allows for large scale high explosive testing with advanced imaging, spectroscopic and flash x-ray diagnostics. The system can be operated as a fully enclosed or partially vented structure enabling a wide variety of tests of high explosives, propellant systems and pyrotechnics.

“The chamber has optical access on three sides for multiple views of testing, while internal walls are amenable to instrumentation and fragmentation shields, allowing the testing of heavily fragmenting warheads. The main advantage of the blast box is that it can be ‘dropped-in’ on site, arriving fully assembled and ready for the concrete pour. This means less site preparation, fewer personnel needed for installation and rapid times from delivery to first operation.”

Caunton Engineering and Modular Walling Systems are now in detailed discussions with potential customers about a broad range of applications for the Steel Bricks™ system – including the global nuclear industry. Dr Gallocher continues: “The success of the University of Illinois contract shows that the Steel Bricks™ system is perfectly suited for markets where potentially dangerous materials are being handled and where time on site needs to be minimised. We believe that this technology, combined with the significant cost and time reductions of off-site manufacture, will now provide a major stimulus for the global roll out of Small Modular Reactors.”

 

A specialist construction team is making the 11,000km journey home to the UK after successfully completing the groundworks for a new state-of-the-art polar research building at British Antarctic Survey’s (BAS) Rothera Research Station, Antarctica.

Foundations for the new scientific support facility, the Discovery Building, were laid and perimeter wall erected this construction season. The new energy-efficient facility will support polar scientists who undertake vital research into climate change and biodiversity. The Discovery Building is part of a major programme commissioned by UKRI-NERC to modernise the UK’s Antarctic Infrastructure.

Delivering the new energy-efficient building is the Antarctic Infrastructure Modernisation Programme (AIMP) partnership, which includes construction partner BAM and their team – design consultants Sweco, and Hugh Broughton Architects providing delivery design. Ramboll is acting as British Antarctic Survey’s Technical Advisors, with their team – architects NORR providing concept design and Turner & Townsend providing cost management. The partnership encompasses a range of suppliers and subcontractors providing exceptional knowledge, materials and equipment to execute remarkable results in extreme conditions.

The coronavirus pandemic presented major logistical challenges. Construction can only take place during the Antarctic summer months between December to May because of harsh winter conditions. As a result of logistical constraints from the Covid-19 pandemic, the 24-person construction team had just ten weeks to complete this season’s work. The team also spent two weeks in quarantine before departing the UK and starting their journey to Antarctica by ship in late November.

The construction team was able to lay 70 precast concrete foundations to support the building’s structural steel frame and install the 32 sections of perimeter wall. The team have placed approximately 3,500 tonnes of graded rock fill to create the formation level, ready for the ground floor slabs to be fitted next season.

The Discovery Building replaces six old buildings at the station and is expected to be completed in 2024. The new two-storey 4,500m² (gross internal area) facility has energy saving features, including thermally-efficient building envelope, heat recovery generators and thermal stores, and a ventilation system with air exchanges based on occupancy. The Discovery Building will use some renewable energy, including photovoltaic solar panels. To minimise snow accumulation around the entire perimeter of the building, it features a slight pitched roof and wind deflector, the largest of it’s kind in Antarctica.

The unique design of the building will cater for the wellbeing and collaboration aspects of living in Antarctica. Vibrant, open-plan offices have been designed to foster better collaboration bringing natural light in during the long, dark Antarctic winters.

 

Jon Ager, Director of the UK AIMP at BAS said: “This has been the most challenging year for the programme since its inception in 2017. We were forced to curtail this activity last season, to bring our team home safely as the world entered lockdown. It was therefore essential that we completed the groundworks this season so that when we return in December we have the best opportunity to complete a weathertight structure, and to prevent damage from the extreme Antarctic winter. Alongside our industry partners and wider supply chain, we can’t wait to return in a few months to start work on this vital polar building”.

Martin Bellamy, Managing Director, at BAM Nuttall said, “This is the end of a relatively short, but hugely successful season for the project and the team. Everyone in the partnership has worked brilliantly to deliver the work. The modernisation of the infrastructure in Antarctica is a true collaboration between science and industry. I’d like to thank everyone for the support and commitment during what has been a challenging time, globally.”

Bruce Wulff, Project Director at Ramboll said: “The Discovery Building is a one of a kind and pushes the boundaries of design in extreme Antarctic conditions. It also makes a significant contribution towards BAS’s objectives of reducing its carbon emissions and it’s great to see it starting to take shape.”

Stewart Craigie, Technical Director at Sweco said: “The close collaboration between owners, operators, constructors and designers has ensured the success of this project especially in this most challenging season with the reduced timeframe. It has been a privilege to play a small part in the team that have prepared the ground and set the foundations for the future seasons. We are definitely in a strong position to maintain our planned completion in 2024 and the team should be very proud of their achievements to date.”

 

 

Cooling the planet by filtering excess carbon dioxide out of the air on an industrial scale would require a new, massive global industry – what would it need to work?

The year is 2050. Walk out of the Permian Basin Petroleum Museum in Midland, Texas, and drive north across the sun-baked scrub where a few remaining oil pumpjacks nod lazily in the heat, and then you’ll see it: a glittering palace rising out of the pancake-flat ground. The land here is mirrored: the choppy silver-blue waves of an immense solar array stretch out in all directions. In the distance, they lap at a colossal grey wall five storeys high and almost a kilometre long. Behind the wall, you glimpse the snaking pipes and gantries of a chemical plant.

As you get closer you see the wall is moving, shimmering – it is entirely made up of huge fans whirring in steel boxes. You think to yourself that it looks like a gigantic air conditioning unit, blown up to incredible proportions. In a sense, that’s exactly what this is. You’re looking at a direct air capture (DAC) plant, one of tens of thousands like it across the globe. Together, they’re trying to cool the planet by sucking carbon dioxide out of the air. This Texan landscape was made famous for the billions of barrels of oil pulled out of its depths during the 20th Century. Now the legacy of those fossil fuels – the CO2 in our air – is being pumped back into the emptied reservoirs.

If the world is to meet Paris Agreement goals of limiting global warming to 1.5C by 2100, sights like this may be necessary by mid-century.

We have a climate change problem and it’s caused by an excess of CO2. With direct air capture, you can remove any emission, anywhere, from any moment in time – Steve Oldham

But step back for a moment to 2021, to Squamish, British Columbia where, against a bucolic skyline of snowy mountains, the finishing touches are being put to a barn-sized device covered in blue tarpaulin. When it becomes operational in September, Carbon Engineering’s prototype direct air capture plant will begin scrubbing a tonne of CO2 from the air every year. It is a small start, and a somewhat larger plant in Texas is in the works, but this is the typical scale of a DAC plant today.

“We have a climate change problem and it’s caused by an excess of CO2,” says Carbon Engineering chief executive Steve Oldham. “With DAC, you can remove any emission, anywhere, from any moment in time. It’s very powerful tool to have.”

Most carbon capture focuses on cleaning emissions at the source: scrubbers and filters on smokestacks that prevent harmful gases reaching the atmosphere. But this is impractical for small, numerous point sources like the planet’s billion or so automobiles. Nor can it address the CO2 that is already in the air. That’s where direct air capture comes in.

The number of things that would have to happen without direct air capture are so stretching and multiple it’s highly unlikely we can meet the Paris Agreements without it – Ajay Gambhir

If the world wants to avoid catastrophic climate change, switching to a carbon neutral society is not enough. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned that limiting global warming to 1.5C by 2100 will require technologies such as DAC for “large-scale deployment of carbon dioxide removal measures” – large-scale meaning many billions of tonnes, or gigatonnes, each year. Elon Musk recently pledged $100m (£72m) to develop carbon capture technologies, while companies such as Microsoft, United Airlines and ExxonMobil are making billion-dollar investments in the field.

“Current models suggest we’re going to need to remove 10 gigatonnes of CO2 per year by 2050, and by the end of the century that number needs to double to 20 gigatonnes per year,” says Jane Zelikova, a climate scientist at the University of Wyoming. Right now, “we’re removing virtually none. We’re having to scale from zero.”

Carbon Engineering’s plant in Squamish is designed as a testbed for different technologies. But the firm is drawing up blueprints for a much larger plant in the oil fields of west Texas, which would fix 1 million tonnes of CO2 annually. “Once one is done, it’s a cookie cutter model, you simply build replicas of that plant,” says Oldham. Yet he admits the scale of the task ahead is dizzying. “We need to pull 800 gigatonnes out of the atmosphere. It’s not going to happen overnight.”

Blue-sky thinking

The science of direct air capture is straightforward. There are several ways to do it, but the one that Carbon Engineering’s system uses fans to draw air containing 0.04% CO2 (today’s atmospheric levels) across a filter drenched in potassium hydroxide solution – a caustic chemical commonly known as potash, used in soapmaking and various other applications. The potash absorbs CO2 from the air, after which the liquid is piped to a second chamber and mixed with calcium hydroxide (builder’s lime). The lime seizes hold of the dissolved CO2, producing small flakes of limestone. These limestone flakes are sieved off and heated in a third chamber, called a calciner, until they decompose, giving off pure CO2, which is captured and stored. At each stage, the leftover chemical residues are recycled back in the process, forming a closed reaction that repeats endlessly with no waste materials.

 

 

We’re past the point where reducing emissions needed to take place. We’re locking in our reliance on DAC more and more – Jane Zelikova

With global carbon emissions continuing to rise, the climate target of 1.5C is looking less and less likely without interventions like this.

“The number of things that would have to happen without direct air capture are so stretching and multiple it’s highly unlikely we can meet the Paris Agreements without it,” says Ajay Gambhir, senior researcher at the Imperial College Grantham Institute for Climate Change and an author of a 2019 paper on the role of DAC in climate mitigation.

The IPCC does present some climate-stabilising models that don’t rely on direct air capture, but Gambhir says these are “extremely ambitious” in their assumptions about advances in energy efficiency and people’s willingness to change their behaviour.

“We’re past the point where reducing emissions needed to take place,” says Zelikova. “We’re locking in our reliance on DAC more and more.”

DAC is far from the only way carbon can be taken out of the atmosphere. Carbon can be removed naturally through land use changes such as restoring peatland, or most popularly, planting forests. But this is slow and would require huge tracts of valuable land – foresting an area the size of the United States, by some estimates, and driving up food prices five-fold in the process. And in the case of trees, the carbon removal effect is limited, as they will eventually die and release their stored carbon, unless they can be felled and burned in a closed system.

 

The scale of the challenge for carbon removal using technologies like DAC, rather than plants, is no less gargantuan. Gambhir’s paper calculates that simply keeping pace with global CO2 emissions – currently 36 gigatonnes per year – would mean building in the region of 30,000 large-scale DAC plants, more than three for every coal-fired power station operating in the world today. Each plant would cost up to $500m (£362m) to build – coming in at a cost of up to $15 trillion (£11tn).

Every one of those facilities would need to be stocked with solvent to absorb CO2. Supplying a fleet of DAC plants big enough to capture 10 gigatonnes of CO2 every year will require around four million tonnes of potassium hydroxide, the entire annual global supply of this chemical one and a half times over.

Carbon Engineering’s pilot plant in British Columbia, is the “cookie cutter” model

for much larger DAC plants (Credit: Carbon Engineering)

And once those thousands of DAC plants are built, they also need power to run. “If this was a global industry absorbing 10 gigatonnes of CO2 a year, you would be expending 100 exajoules, about a sixth of total global energy,” says Gambhir. Most of this energy is needed to heat the calciner to around 800C – too intense for electrical power alone, so each DAC plant would need a gas furnace, and a ready supply of gas.

Costing the planet

Estimates of how much it costs to capture a tonne of CO2 from the air vary widely, ranging from $100 to $1,000 (£72 to £720) per tonne. Oldham says that most figures are unduly pessimistic – he is confident that Climate Engineering can fix a tonne of carbon for as little as $94 (£68), especially once it becomes a widespread industrial process.

A bigger issue is figuring out where to send the bill. Incredibly, saving the world turns out to be a pretty hard sell, commercially speaking. Direct air capture does result in one valuable commodity, though: thousands of tonnes of compressed CO2. This can be combined with hydrogen to make synthetic, carbon-neutral fuel. That could then be sold or burned in the gas furnaces of the calciner (where the emissions would be captured and the cycle continue once again).

Surprisingly, one of the biggest customers for compressed CO2 is the fossil fuel industry.

As wells run dry, it’s not uncommon to squeeze the remaining oil out of the ground by pressuring the reservoir using steam or gas in a process called enhanced oil recovery. Carbon dioxide is a popular choice for this, and comes with additional benefit of locking that carbon underground, completing the final stage of carbon capture and storage. Occidental Petroleum, which has partnered with Carbon Engineering to build a full-scale DAC plant in Texas, uses 50 million tonnes of CO2 every year in enhanced oil recovery. Each tonne of CO2 used in this way is worth about $225 (£163) in tax credits alone.

It’s perhaps fitting that the CO2 in our air is eventually being returned underground to the oil fields from whence it came, although maybe ironic that the only way to finance this is in the pursuit of yet more oil. Occidental and others hope that by pumping CO2 into the ground, they can drastically reduce the carbon impact of that oil: a typical enhanced-recovery operation sequesters one tonne of CO2 for every 1.5 tonnes it ultimately releases in fresh oil. So while the process reduces the emissions associated with oil, it doesn’t balance the books.

Though there are other uses that may become more commercially viable. Another direct air capture company, Climeworks, has 14 smaller scale units in operation sequestering 900 tonnes of CO2 a year, which it sells to a greenhouse to enhance the growth of pickles. It’s now working on a longer-term solution: a plant under construction in Iceland will mix captured CO2 with water and pump it 500-600m (1,600-2,000ft) underground, where the gas will react with the surrounding basalt and turn to stone. To finance this, it offers businesses and citizens the ability to buy carbon offsets, starting at a mere €7 (£6) per month. Can the rest of the world be convinced to buy in?

“DAC is always going to cost money, and unless you’re paid to do it, there is no financial incentive,” says Chris Goodall, author of What We Need To Do Now: For A Zero Carbon Future. “Climeworks can sell credits to virtuous people, write contracts with Microsoft and Stripe to take a few hundred tonnes a year out of the atmosphere, but this needs to be scaled up a millionfold, and that requires someone to pay for it.

“There are subsidies for electric cars, cheap financing for solar plants, but you don’t see these for DAC,” says Oldham. “There is so much focus on emission reduction, but there isn’t the same degree of focus on the rest of the problem, the volume of CO2 in the atmosphere. The big impediment for DAC is that thinking isn’t in policy.”

Zelikova believes that DAC will follow a similar path to other climate technologies, and become more affordable. “We have well-developed cost curves showing how technology can go down in cost really quickly,” says Zelikova. “We surmounted similar hurdles with wind and solar. The biggest thing is to deploy them as much as possible. It’s important for government to support commercialisation – it has a role as a first customer, and a customer with very deep pockets.”

Goodall advocates for a global carbon tax, which would make it expensive to emit carbon unless offsets were purchased. But he recognises this is still a politically unpalatable option. Nobody wants to pay higher taxes, especially if the externalities of our high-energy lifestyles – increasing wildfires, droughts, floods, sea level rise – are seen as being shouldered by somebody else.

Zelikova adds we also need broader conversation in society about how much these efforts should cost. “There is an enormous cost in climate change, in induced or exacerbated natural disasters. We need to do away with idea that DAC should be cheap.”

Risk and reward

Even if we agree to build 30,000 industrial scale DAC plants, find the chemical materials to run them, and the money to pay for it all, we won’t be out of the woods yet. In fact, we might end up in a worse position than before, thanks to a phenomenon known as mitigation deterrence.

“If you think DAC is going to be there in the medium- to long-term, you will not do as much near-term emissions reduction,” explains Gambhir. “If the scale-up goes wrong – if it turns out to be difficult to produce the sorbent, or that it degrades more quickly, if it’s trickier technologically, if turns out to be more expensive than expected, then in a sense by not acting quickly in the near-term, you’ve effectively locked yourself into a higher temperature pathway.”

Critics of DAC point out that much of its appeal lies in the promise of a hypothetical technology that allows us to continue living our carbon-rich lifestyles. Yet Oldham argues that for some hard-to-decarbonise industries, such as aviation, offsets that fund DAC might be the most viable option. “If it’s cheaper and easier to pull carbon out of air than to stop going up in the air, maybe that is what DAC plays in emission control.”

Gambhir argues that it’s not an “either-or” situation. “We need to rapidly reduce emissions in the near-term, but at same time, determinedly develop DAC to work out for sure if it’s going to be there for us in the future.” Zelikova agrees: “It’s a ‘yes, and’ situation,” she says. “DAC is a critical tool to balance out the carbon budget, so what we can’t eliminate today can be removed later.”

As Oldham seeks to scale up Carbon Engineering, the biggest fundamental factor is proving large scale DAC is “feasible, affordable and available”. If he’s successful, the future of our planet’s climate may once again be decided in the oil fields of Texas.

Source: Future Planet (BBC)