Have you ever imagined that artificial intelligence could help create a formula for producing cement in just seconds? Not just any cement — but an eco-friendly type that helps reduce pollution and carbon emissions!
In recent years, it has become increasingly clear that the cement industry is one of the largest contributors to environmental pollution, accounting for about 8% of global carbon dioxide emissions. This is mainly due to clinker, the key ingredient in cement production, which requires extremely high temperatures during manufacturing — a process that releases massive amounts of harmful gases.
Artificial Intelligence and Sustainable Cement
Here comes the role of artificial intelligence — offering an innovative and rapid solution. Instead of spending months conducting laboratory experiments to discover a new cement mix, AI can now generate novel formulations in just seconds.
AI researchers in Switzerland have found a way to significantly reduce the carbon footprint of cement by redesigning its composition. Their system simulates thousands of possible ingredient combinations and precisely identifies those that maintain the cement’s strength while producing far lower carbon dioxide emissions — all within seconds.
When cement is mixed with water, sand, and gravel, it becomes concrete — the most widely used building material in the world. However, cement production releases vast amounts of CO₂. Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute are using artificial intelligence and computer modeling to develop alternative formulations designed to be far more climate-friendly.
Sustainable Cement Manufacturing
Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) have developed an AI-based model that accelerates the discovery of new cement formulations capable of maintaining the same material quality while achieving a significantly lower carbon footprint.
In traditional cement production, rotary kilns in factories are heated to an extremely high temperature of 1,400°C to burn crushed limestone and convert it into clinker, the raw material used to make cement.
These high temperatures cannot usually be achieved by electricity alone; they result from energy-intensive combustion processes that emit large amounts of carbon dioxide. Surprisingly, combustion itself accounts for less than half of the total emissions. The majority comes from the raw materials used to produce clinker and cement — specifically, the CO₂ that is chemically bound to limestone and released during the high-temperature transformation in the kilns.
Promising Strategies to Reduce CO₂ Emissions
One of the most promising strategies to lower emissions is modifying the composition of cement itself — that is, replacing part of the clinker with alternative cementitious materials. This is precisely what a multidisciplinary team at PSI’s Waste Management Laboratory, part of its Nuclear Energy and Safety Research Division, is working on.
Instead of relying solely on time-consuming experiments or complex simulations, the researchers developed a machine-learning-based modeling approach.
According to Dr. Romana Büiger, mathematician and lead author of the study,
“This allows us to simulate and optimize cement compositions that emit far less CO₂ while maintaining the same high level of mechanical performance.”
She added,
“Instead of testing thousands of variations in the laboratory, we can use our model to generate practical, eco-friendly cement recipes within seconds.”
