Building With Carbon | Green Energy News

January 16, 2005 – Vol.9 No.43

BUILDING WITH CARBON.

Anyone who lives in a wood house or owns wood furniture has to appreciate what a good job Mother Nature has done in supplying us with a strong, versatile, attractive and sustainable (when from properly managed forests) building material. A material that’s in large part, carbon.

At the molecular level the carbon bonds that contribute to the strength of wood are similar to the chemical bonds found in petroleum.

But, while the carbon bonds in wood will serve us for decades (such as keeping a strong roof over our heads), the carbon bonds in petroleum will be broken fleetingly in a trip to the store or a commute to work. Those carbon bonds are blown apart when petroleum fuel is ignited.

With oil in obvious decline, wouldn’t it make sense to save what remains for building things that could last more than a lifetime, rather than be used mostly for soon-forgotten travel? Up to 90 percent of oil reserves are used as transportation fuel.

Fortunately, carbon fiber as a building material is getting increasingly popular and finding its way into a wide range of products.

Zoltek Companies, a maker of raw carbon fiber, has reported that it will become a major supplier to TechFab LLC of Anderson, South Carolina, of carbon fiber for use in reinforcing products known as C-GRID (tm).

C-GRID can be used in place of traditional steel in reinforced concrete products such as precast modules, housing components, beams, even kitchen countertops. Since the carbon fiber is stronger than steel, concrete products can be thinner, thus lighter - saving energy in the transportation of those products.

Oil is an undervalued, declining resource that is too valuable to waste on travel. Steering oil away from transportation fuel to a building material could give it a longer future than the few decades that are left.

Visit Zoltek at http://www.zoltek.com/ and TechFab at http://www.techfabllc.com/