High-Performance Graphene Enhanced Cement: A Revolutionary Innovation in Low Carbon Manufacturing Process (GR-LCM) - TFI Resubmission

英国国家统计局估计，英国建筑业占GDP的6.1%。水泥和混凝土生产是大多数建筑过程的重要贡献者，因此对创造就业非常关键。水泥子行业独一无二地削减了制造业和国内生产总值180亿GB的矿产品行业，这两个行业除了350万个间接就业岗位外，还直接雇佣了7.4万人。尽管这一部门对国家和全球发展的影响很重要，但它对能源消耗(水泥生产成本的60%-70%花在能源上)和温室气体排放的影响是巨大的。例如，英国建筑业的排放量在2019年为1300万公吨，自1990年以来一直在不断增加。同样，可归因于英国水泥制造活动的温室气体排放量从2007年的320万公吨稳步上升至2019年的440万公吨。随着当前全球推动更严格的能效立法，水泥等基础行业的盈利能力和可持续性将在很大程度上取决于它们在多大程度上降低了能源消耗和碳足迹。尽管水泥行业目前正在探索包括碳捕获技术在内的几项倡议，但与技术复杂性和成本影响相关的问题仍然存在。因此，目前的项目将探索石墨烯在建筑行业及其相关供应链(特别是水泥制造)中的应用，以提高能源效率、原材料优化和水泥/混凝土的整体性能。初步调查已经描述了石墨烯显著提高混凝土强度的能力，但此类研究主要集中在用户端(例如建筑工地)，对水泥制造过程的研究较少。由于单位重量所需的石墨烯数量很少，围绕着石墨烯在大量水泥中的注入和分散的问题也没有得到研究。因此，我们将致力于开发一种新型的高性能石墨烯增强水泥(GR-CEM)产品。GR-CEM将提供使用较低等级的水泥制造原材料(例如，低烧/低温熟料、生石灰石等)的机会。并因此有助于减轻水泥生产带来的碳影响。因此，该项目将考虑到优化的石墨烯分散和注入系统的开发、GR-CEM的经济可行性以及其对碳、健康和安全的影响。

The Office of National Statistics estimates that the UK's construction sector accounts for 6.1% of GDP. Cement and concrete production are significant contributors to most construction processes, thereby making it very crucial for job creation. The cement subsector uniquely cuts across the manufacturing and £18bn-GDP Mineral Products sector that directly employs 74,000 people in addition to 3.5m indirect jobs. As valuable as the impact of this sector is to national and global development, its impact on energy consumption (60-70% of cement production cost is expended on energy) and greenhouse gas emissions is immense. For instance, the emission from the UK's construction industry was 13 million metric tonnes in 2019 and has continuously increased since 1990\. Similarly, greenhouse gas emissions attributable to UK's cement manufacturing activities have steadily risen from 3.2 million metric tonnes in 2007 to 4.4 million metric tonnes in 2019\. With the current global push for more stringent legislations on energy efficiency, the profitability as well as sustainability of foundation industries, such as cement would significantly depend on how much they lower their energy consumption and carbon footprints. While several initiatives including carbon capturing technologies are currently explored within the cement industry, questions related to technical complexity and cost implications still linger. Therefore, the current project will explore the application of graphene within the construction sector and its associated supply chain (especially cement manufacturing), to improve energy efficiency, raw material optimisation and the overall performance of cement/concrete.Preliminary investigations have already depicted the ability of graphene to significantly enhance concrete strength, but such studies mainly focused on the user end (e.g., construction sites) and less on the cement manufacturing process. Owing to the minute quantity of graphene required per weight, the issues surrounding the injection and dispersion of graphene within large quantities of cement have also not been investigated. Therefore, we will aim to develop a novel "high performance Graphene Enhanced cement" (GR-CEM) product. The GR-CEM will offer the opportunity to use lower grades of cement manufacturing raw materials (e.g., under burnt/low temperature clinker, raw limestone, etc.) and therefore contributing to mitigating the carbon impacts from cement manufacturing. The project will thus take into account the development of an optimised graphene dispersion and injection system, the economic viability of GR-CEM as well as its carbon and health and safety impact.