Peddling Green Cement and Concrete Abroad

Fly ash bricks? So, these bricks are made from coal-burning residue - a hazardous industrial waste that is loaded with highly toxic heavy metals such as lead, cadmium, mercury, nickel, selenium, arsenic, selenium and the likes??? And the bricks are not fired?
Sounds like Henry Liu?s Greenest Brick technology - take a reactive, class C fly ash, mix with water, press and cure with steam. Only problem is that the brick has nowhere near the performance of traditional (fired) clay bricks and carries a host of occupational safety and environmental hazard risks.
Okay Porat - lets see the product and lets compare it side-by-side with clay bricks. Clay bricks are load-bearing, have excellent compressive strength, are fire-resistant, are freeze-thaw resistant, do not leach toxic metals, are safe to handle and use, are not environmentally hazardous, are completely recyclable, and last for hundreds of years. Lets see how Porat?s fly ash bricks measure up. In particular, lets see the strength and robustness data, and especially the safety data - fly ash and fly ash products have been investigated for decades, and the problems with them are well recognized - variability of fly ash, occupational and environmental toxicity, and lack of durability to mention a few.
To note - many companies are producing bricks using fly ash, but they either use portland cement and/or lime as binder and autoclave them, or they fire them as for clay bricks - their processes produce safe, high-performance products that can be used to replace more traditional building products.
As for Porat?s fly ash bricks - it remains to be seen, but judging from his past, I would be very cautious. Porat?s first claim to fame was the Apple spinoff General Magic (the blogs make for very interesting reading) - Porat was so good at selling a non-existent product and not delivering that he got booted by the board. Of course, he only left after hyping the company, and subsequently raked it in when the company went IPO - he ran away with millions before it became apparent that the company had no product and shares nose-dived and trusting taxpayers lost their hard-earned money. General Magic was a disaster story - I suppose that is why Porat went into hiding for several years. And hey-presto - Porat re-invents himself as the ?Moses? of Green Materials? And onto Serious Materials - another great success story! Funny thing is that the company has lots of hype but no product - a familiar story. Where is EcoRock? Anyone? The word on the grapevine is that Serious Materials gathered 50 million dollars for a factory, but to date have nothing to manufacture in it, and the insiders at Foundation are ?rather concerned?. Time for Porat to roll out the hype wagon? Perhaps CalStar is the hype wagon? Oh no - another red herring. Lets look at the history of CalStar - started in 2006 - their first claim was for a magnesium phosphate cement that would change the world and cut global greenhouse gas emissions. They made all sorts of promises and projections for starting-up production in 2007, then suddenly went quiet. Turned out that they had shelved their product. I wonder why? Perhaps it didnt exist - perhaps it didnt work.. who knows with Porat?s hype wagon where the truth lies? Then they had a secret new cement product, which also fizzled out. And now, bricks! Where is the world-changing cement?
I would steer clear of Porat - if there really is a product (and past experience would indicate that it is highly hyped, and possibly non-existent), it is likely to have major performance, safety and liability concerns.
I would look instead at companies like Calera - the founder - Brent Constanz is a visionary no-nonsense academic who has several successful startup companies under his belt. Calera has a very interesting bio-based technology for making a carbonate mineral admixture for portland cement by reacting CO2 emissions from power plants with seawater brines, and is looking at using its product in general use cement, as well as for making bricks, block, etc. It is interesting to note Calera?s connection to CalStar - Constanz apparenty had a run-in with Porat and decided to found his own company - one wonders why - real scientist vs fraud? Also, the grapevine indicates that several of Calera?s employees are ex-employees of CalStar, who left after becoming disaffected with Calstar and Porat. The latest rumor is that CalStar?s R&D director left CalStar recently, and might also turn up at Calera.

See additional threads on Calstar, Porat and fly ash bricks at:

http://techpulse360.com/2008/10/23/reader-comments-on-fly-ash-brick-toxicity-cal-star-hype/

http://techpulse360.com/2008/10/21/cal-star-to-build-worlds-greenest-brick-cement-targets-7-trillion-construction-industry/#comment-125

THE LEACHING OF TOXIC METALS FROM CALSTAR’S FLY ASH BRICKS HAS BEEN CONFIRMED.

The data is hidden away in Calstar Products (previously Calstar Cement) website – http://calstarproducts.com/resources/gradient-memorandum/

As suspected, fly ash bricks leach toxic metals – the data shows that even with EPAs very liberal leaching tests, metals including arsenic, antimony, beryllium, cadmium, lead, manganese, mercury and nickel rapidly leach from the bricks within a few hours.

Recall that, Calstar (Luke Pustejovsky, Director of Marketing) was previously claiming that no metals leached from the bricks.

Now, Calstar has changed its story and is claiming that the levels of the metals are below EPA control levels, and so their bricks are safe!

These are the very same EPA tests that have been used to declare fly ash stored in dumps as safe – that lie has been exposed many times with the discovery of severe water contamination and poisoning of people and the environment by toxic metals leaching from fly ash – for example the recent TVA spill.

It is very telling that Calstar has chosen tests that have been shown many times to be seriously flawed and not properly assess hazard. The coal/fly ash industry has hidden behind these same tests for decades and used them to claim that fly ash is safe.

The danger of Calstar’s fly ash bricks is clear from the fact that even these very mild tests result in the leaching of a range of toxic metals. The leaching of these toxins and exposure to people will in reality be much worse.

More proof that Calstar is selling a toxic product that will poison people and the environment.