TecEco Home

A message from John Harrison Welcome to TecEco.com which now serves as the legacy home of my work during the period circa 1997 to 2017. I have reorganised the site to preserve my thinking during those early years without change. In recent times I have been very aware of emerging biosphere change issues caused substantially by us which we will not survive unless we work together to remedy them. These issues together with my ideas for solving them are on my biosphere pages on TecEco.com and precede those on the biosphere hosted by a new Gaiaengineering.org site where you will be able to view summaries and download detail for a peppercorn fee to help me survive and continue my work on sustainability. TecEco was founded in the late 90's. In the early years I was testing ways of reducing the CO2 emissions from the production of Portland cement and invented a portland (calcium) - magnesium cement system which included Tec-Cement with superior properties and Eco-Cement that substantially set by absorbing CO2 and in March 2002 I made it publicly clear that the built environment was the ideal repository for mineralised CO2 and immense global interest ensued. When Barb my wife died my finances as a self funded scientist ran low and I had to let the patents go. Many have taken up using my ideas for the good of the planet and some even tried to claim them. Provided they reference my works and do not copy documents and rename them as their own as has happened in the past twice I am happy enough about that. Unfortunately, the cement industry generally decided not to adopt what I told them to improve Portland cement probably because making it the same or similar to the way everybody else made made it less of their problem if something went wrong as it often did and still does with portland cement concrete Reactive lime is unfortunately still to be found in Portland cement powders. Solutions such as the use of pozzolans including metakaolin as well as reactive magnesium oxide (rMgO) are not used and left to third parties even though both metakaolin which is an excellent pozzolan and reactive MgO (rMgO) could be made using waste heat from their plants and included in their product by cement producers. Incorrect and inappropriate additions would be much less common if they were precisely added by the cement industry. Runaway global warming and the need for massive abatement and sequestration are more than ever urgent issues to address and there was a global trend to legislative monitoring and enforcement now less pronounced. We also have population issues and people without good intent in power waring or threatening war in many countries. Despite all this I still believe in the greater good and hope to get more involved as the problems we have that we must solve. I have for some time mentioned ammonia as a fuel and a paper is included in the biosphere pages on the Gaiaengineering.org site about its manufacture from sewage and use to generate electricity. Portland cement on its own has weaknesses and unlike Roman cement is not durable particularly in aggressive environments such as seawater as we discovered in Tasmania, Australia with our wharfage. The reality is that all Portland cement sold should have sufficient pozzolana and rMgO to rectify its inherent weaknesses so its durability could be guaranteed. Apart from the durability issure resolved please note that Portland cements with rMgO, pozzolans and aggregates continue to gain strength for much more than 28 days and deliver more value. I have proved this in association with an Australian cement company. Other than the range of magnesium cements I invented in the 1990's which remain under their original categorisations I also discuss new technology ideas I had before 2017 to reduce waste by converting them to resources under the more logical headings Syncarb GaiaEngineering and Carbonsafe on this website. GaiEngineering is the new host for my papers on biosphere sustainability, Syncarb is about smart ways to capture carbon in thermodynamically stable forms. Carbonsafe is about creating economic value storing carbon.in stable forms and TecEco cements have better LCCA's. (Life cycle cost analysis). As aggregate is over 80% of most concretes using man-made carbonate aggregate as well would achieve significant sequestration and I remond readers there is an abundant supply of the cations required in sea water. GaiaEngineering harnesses green technologies that will contribute to our long-term survival on spaceship earth. Floods, fires strong winds, high and low temperatures are the heralds of the changes happening. We must think of new and better ways of doing what we do as well as new things to do that will prolong life on earth as we knew it. There is no such place as "away" and the word waste will hopefully one day be forgotten as it is possible for us to thrive within a closed system in our own technosphere with no unbalanced outputs of wastes to global commons including that of CO2. It is imperative we reverse what many think is a 6th extinction event for the planet. Nature is a frugal economist. CO2 and methane are still insufficiently utilised resources that are a problem in the atmospheric commons and a big contributor to our sustainability problems. The logical things to do is find thermodynamically profitable stable uses for the gases! I am encouraged by what is becoming a rush toward sustainable energy from the sun (wind, hydro, wave and solar) as cheap and abundant energy will allow us to run flexible sequestration and abatement processes that reverse undesirable moleconomic flows in the waste chain, particularly whenever there is excess energy. With it we can push electrons where they do not want to go. Around the coils of my dreamed of electric car perhaps? (my thinking in early 2000.) Electric cars are the new norm now and I can't wait to see how the new sodium batteries evolve. Recently I have caught up on papers on sequestration in brines and about technologies I invented. They have not added much to our knowledge. We already have new pages under the heading Syncarb about creating thermodynamically stable carbonates from brine wastewater. If anybody out there wants to assist there is plenty to do. Promotion is essential to get those dollars flowing in the right directions. The Future The technology is now well known and the original TecEco company has no funds or funding and will be used as a tomb for my earlier ideas which are now more relevant than ever. My dream is that one day Tececo (.org?) and Gaiaengineering.org will be the names for a not-for-profit research centre for new thinking about concrete and the Biosphere, the apple skin thin layer of the earth that is supporting life despite some recent extinctions of insects, birds and mammals.

The TecEco Web Site

Welcome to a global hub for sustainable technologies about the Biosphere and the original magnesium cements first patented by John Harrison:

• Tec-Cement - A more durable cement for pre-mix concrete that improves all properties including shrinkage.
• Eco-Cement - Environmentally friendly cement that sets by absorbing CO2.
• Enviro-Cement - A superior cement for toxic and hazardous waste immobilisation.
• Tec-Kiln - A more efficient kiln for making calcium and magnesium oxides used in TecEco cements from their carbonates without releases.
• Syncarb - Processes for sequestering CO2 from the air to make thermodynamically stable compounds.
• CarbonSafe - Processes for creating products from sequestered CO2 and for including as much waste as possible.
• Gaia Engineering - Focussing of technologies and products with more sustainable supply & waste chains. The term includes Syncarb and Carbonsafe processes.

Humans are overwhelming just about everything else living on on the planet. Population growth is out of control. Unfortunately, some misinformed politicians think this is a good thing. It isn't

I am confident that using abundant energy from the sun (solar, tide, wind and hydro) driving new processes we can at least correct the imbalance in the atmosphere. By mimicking nature, we can profitably use CO2 in our every-day activities such as building, construction plastics and fuels. The profit made will guarantee that it happens. Forget CO2 absorption towers, they are not powered by profit, and burying the gas underground has too many potential legacy issues.

If TecEco can attract enough funding we will do further research in the right directions such as fixing modern day Portland cement and financing processes like Syncarb and Carbonsafe to undertake sequestration and product development projects respectively that are part of an ambitious and politically acceptable solution to the problems of global warming, water and waste. GaiaEngineering focus on projects to save our biosphere by for example turning carbon dioxide and other wastes into resources thereby changing materials flows and thus underlying damaging moleconomic flows including that of CO2. Profitable processes for sequestration of CO2 and methane will guarantee success.

I say again that Portland cement should not be sold without quality pozzolan and reactive magnesia to improve properties including the retention of bleed water for better more complete hydration of PC minerals. Under the Syncarb heading is a process like the Solvay process for making carbonate. Sequestering carbon dioxide using the magnesium, calcium and sodium contained in for example brine, bitterns, desal or oil process water makes sense and we have experimented in our "lab" using "green" ammonia made electrolytically or from poo or naturally highly alkaline brines such as in the Cabeço de Vide region of Portugal rather than sodium hydroxide, the production of which has a high CO2 load and which is toxic other than low concentration. Syncarb is simple chemistry and a lot more common sense than what I have read lately.

Gaiaengineering involves technical innovation. Any truly sustainable process with a sustainable environmentally friendly supply and waste chains we refer to as Gaiaengineering. Our contributions include a pyro process that is much more efficient and can be run in association with cement manufacture and a method of accelerating the formation of beach rock.

The solution to our problems with carbon dioxide and other wastes is to invent technical paradigms that convert them to resources. Resource use is driven by markets and by creating a market for man made carbonate elligable companies for our assistance, properly funded, will provide essential technical supply chain change.

The Mission

Our mission is to solve global environmental problems including excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, waste, water shortages, pollution etc. We are hoping following this dream will leave the world a better place.

I dream of a research centre to invent, test and proliferate new 'green' technologies. Funding is welcome.

Humans are too many and our influence too great. We must therefore fervently accept our role of maintaining “spaceship earth” [1] as planetary engineers and find ways of maintaining the level of carbon dioxide, methane, oxygen and other gases in the atmosphere at desirable levels and a lot more besides or ultimately perish in what would be a sixth extinction event for the planet.

Our technical world, the techno-sphere, is not a closed system and our take and waste impacts are disturbing the homeostasis of earth systems. As in natural ecological systems we must learn how to make our outputs our inputs and achieve balance. See many of John Harrison's past papers and lectures to find out more about the way we think.

There is a good chance of preserving the future if we mimic nature by finding uses for carbon and other wastes that are profitable. Building with anthropogenically created man-made carbonate and wastes is politically acceptable, doable, invokes a market that is insatiable, large and indefinitely continuing and most likely presents the only viable option we have for getting the CO2 balance right and saving the planet from runaway global warming.

What our Peers Think About our Ideas

The New Scientist Magazine were the first to herald some of my technology as a major breakthrough. “There is a way to make our city streets as green as the Amazon Forest. Almost every aspect of the built environment from bridges to factories to tower blocks, and from roads to sea walls, could be turned into structures that soak up carbon dioxide – the main greenhouse gas behind global warming. All we need to do it is the change the way we make cement.” [2]

The Guardian, Toronto Star and numerous authors from prestigious universities around the world have likewise heralded the technology we invented as an important new breakthrough. This acceptance has been echoed at learned institutions such as at Cambridge University where researchers had this to say.

“One area of research into partial cement replacements is the recently emerged family of reactive magnesia (MgO) cements. These cement formulations, developed and patented a few years ago by the Australian scientist John Harrison, (refs given) are blends of PC and reactive MgO in different proportions depending on the intended application, ranging from structural concrete to porous masonry units. They have been developed with strong emphasis on a range of sustainability advantages over PC and have received significant publicity including coverage in New Scientist and The Guardian." [3]

Follow the formulations provided and our cements work! Talk to us about commercial use as they are copyright. We are overly geneorus however.

Thanks to all those that have fiddled with John Harrison's cement technology, discovered more about overcoming kinetic barriers for the progression to magnesite and other good things. It is flattering that some have event renamed our technology and even pretended to invent it or tried to patent it. Unfortunately, few have considered making them greener by providing economic CO2 capture processes during manufacture which could be done for calcium - based Portland cement as well. A route from magnesium hydroxide may eliminate that depending on the source. Many hydraulic cements now contain low temperature manufactured reactive magnesium oxide (rMgO) and are better for it. Even hydrated magnesium carbonates can be used as they slowly progress to magnesite in concretes.

Apology

We apologise that we cannot answer everybody interested in sustainability and using technologies John Harrison developed. Until we can secure funding, we do not have the resources to answer emails. When we have morphed to a more sustainable not-for-profit organisation one of our main missions will be to service enquiries better and to convince governments and large companies to do what they do more intelligently and with the environment in mind.

A long term solution to the global warming problem must involve a technical capacity to remove CO2 from the air profitably. If you are determined to use TecEco technology to build an exemplar or help us by providing research and development funds please phone John Harrison and he will endeavour to answer you. (See Contact and Involvement)

The State of the Science

As of the 19th April 2022 I had skimmed hundreds of papers. They are written by students and carry the name of their professors (some of whom I know) and mostly take a fish-bowl view of the science covered on this web site years ago when I set out prescriptions for Tec, Eco and Enviro cements. Call them rMgO or RMC cements if you like! Call silicification the formation of MSH if you must! (Mg++ is much smaller than Ca++ so are the structures similar enough?) Here you will find how to optimise rMgO cements and blends of them with other hydraulic compositions dominated by Portland cements.

A final word. We all lean on the shoulders of those that came before us to some extent however the level of plagiarism is ridiculous and infuriating and as bad as todays "Fake News". The old and known become new repeatedly. Some of the science is interesting enough but smart science in a sneaky sense is not really what we need right now. We need common sense. For example, one paper I will not name talked about using magnesium acetate as an accelerator. I have no doubt that in nature organic substances play a role, but the economics and carbon cost are not mentioned and are totally prohibitive. Another paper made a song and dance about weakening concrete over about 8% addition. I don't remember ever formulating a commercial Tec-Cement over about 8 or 9 % addition of rMgO. A pozzolan and or blast furnace slag or metakaolin was always added together with PC and rMgO and my formulations achieved much faster strength gain and significantly greater strengths. There was always much less shrinkage and the rheology was fantastic. See the formulations in the presentation An Update on Tececo Technology for an example.

We can make cement and concrete with much better properties than in the past. We can reduce emissions significantly from the industry and I invite you to read our pages.

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