Global Research Partnership Investigators
2007 Winner Profiles
Dr. Paulo Monteiro
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, California
View Dr. Paulo Monteiro's presentation at the GRP Symposium
Dr. Paulo Monteiro, KAUST Investigator, is a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California, Berkeley in the United States. Dr. Monteiro has been an international leader in the modeling of the physio-chemical behavior of concrete exposed to aggressive environmental conditions. For his research, he has received prestigious awards, such as the Wason Medal and the Brunauer Award. Besides publishing over 140 archival papers, Dr. Monteiro co-wrote a textbook on concrete that was translated to Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese, Greek, and Persian.
KAUST Investigator Award: Green Concrete and Sustainable Construction – a Multi-scale Approach
Ordinary concrete typically contains about 12 percent cement, 8 percent mixing water, and 80 percent aggregate by mass. Worldwide, the concrete industry consumes annually 1.5 billion tons of cement, 9 billion tons of sand and rock together, and one billion tons of mixing water. The demand for concrete is expected to grow to approximately 16 billion tons a year by 2050. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that the yearly production of cement in the United States is 122 million tons. The Arab Union for Cement and Building Materials reports that Saudi Arabian cement companies produce 26 million tons of cement annually. The impact of the cement production on the environment becomes clearer when the productions are normalized to the population of each country; the Saudi production normalizes to about 1 ton/person, which is 2.5 times greater than the American production.
Unfortunately, the extreme climatic conditions and the type of aggregates available limit the life span of many Saudi Arabian structures. The concrete production in Saudi Arabia requires over 17 million tons of potable water every year. In addition, the production of Portland cement is now responsible for 7% of the CO2 emissions worldwide. As a result, the development of geopolymers to replace some of the Portland cement is a topic of high interest. This study will evaluate local materials from Saudi Arabia and then subject different combinations to a variety of tests to determine the optimum concrete mixture. “Green” construction optimizes the available local materials and seeks methods to perfect the durability of the structures.
The investigation will be conducted at various scales, from the nano to the engineering level. The ultimate goal is to develop green concrete that leads to sustainable structures. The characterization of the reaction between cements and recycled materials will be done at a nano-level under in-situ conditions to avoid artifacts. This will be carried out using environmental scanning electron microscopy and the x-ray microscope operated by the Center for X-ray Optics on Beamline 6.1 of the Advanced Light Source, a third-generation synchrotron radiation facility operated by the Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The latter instrument is unique. Samples can be observed wet at high resolution, over time, while simultaneously monitoring the chemical reactions. For this research, we propose to significantly improve the technique by developing a tomographic chamber that permits the reconstruction of 3-D images. This can lead to a breakthrough in the imaging of the in-situ hydration. Another important technique to study advanced materials is the time-of-flight neutron diffraction facilities at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The present proposal will build on these results, where we will conduct comprehensive work on the characterization of sulfate attack and corrosion of reinforced concrete using advanced characterization methods such as fluorescence microcopy, micro-Raman spectroscopy and micro-tomography.
These sophisticated techniques will allow the characterization of materials at a nanoscale, one of key goals of KAUST. Similarly the study of green cements and sustainable construction will integrate nicely into KAUST’s objective of applied research into sustainable development.
About the University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley, established in 1868, is renowned for both its teaching and scholarship. Its faculty includes seven Nobel Laureates currently teaching and 28 MacArthur Foundation Fellows. It was named the best public university in the nation for 2008 by U.S. News & World Report.