New Material Provides Strong and Lightweight Alternative to Concrete – without Cement

We've earlier made report on the development, at Georgia Tech University, and other places, of processes wherein "fly ash", the residues of Coal combustion, primarily from electrical power generation plants, could be reclaimed and utilized in the production of a replacement for traditional cement.

Herein, via the above and following links, we wanted to affirm, and to provide a little more information about, those potentials; and, to highlight what might be one unrecognized benefit of them.

Comment, with additional links and excerpts, follows excerpts from the initial link to:

"New Use for Coal Ash: Material Provides Strong and Lightweight Alternative to Concrete – without Cement

United States Patent: 3766027

We've previously cited the Illinois scientist named in this dispatch, as can be seen in our earlier report of:

Illinois Recycles CO2 to Methane | Research & Development; which discloses the details of: "United States Patent 3,852,180 - Apparatus for CO2 Conversion to Methane; December, 1974; Inventor: Derek Gregory, Illinois; Assignee: SKF Industrial Trading and Development Company, Amsterdam; Abstract: A process of fixation and conversion of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or other sources to produce methane and oxygen. Carbon dioxide is scrubbed from a CO2-containing source and separated by a process of chemical concentration. A special cell is provided in which hydrogen is produced and reacted with the separated CO2 at methanation conditions to produce methane."

Although SKF, of the Netherlands, the named Assignee, is not an insignificant company, it seems odd that an Illinois researcher, such as Gregory, would be working on such an unusual project for them.

Energy Citations Database (ECD) - - Document #7308281

Four Companies Consider Ethane Cracker - News, Sports, Jobs - The Intelligencer / Wheeling News-Register; wherein we're treated to even more printed-word drooling over the fabled Marcellus Shale Gas riches that dangle before us.

Some excerpts:

""There are four companies interested in building an ethane cracker or two or three," (a source is quoted as saying, who also noted that) the New Martinsville site is a possibility in addition to the Kanawha Valley.

(The source) said Kanawha Valley was home to as many as six ethane crackers in the 1950s, noting the South Charleston operations played a major role in the expansion of the plastics industry.

"We are very optimistic about getting the cracker because we have the sites and we have the gas," he said.

United States Patent: 6656978

In two previous reports, we've provided you with information concerning the development, by Japan's multinational Chemicals and Petroleum industries services company, Chiyoda Corporation, of technologies wherein Carbon Dioxide, reclaimed from whatever source, can be made to react with Methane, with or without the inclusion of Water, and to thereby form a hydrocarbon synthesis gas suitable for catalytic condensation into a variety of liquid hydrocarbon fuels and chemicals.

As seen in: More Japan CO2 + Methane = Hydrocarbon Syngas | Research & Development; concerning their: United States Patent: 6312660 - Process for Preparing Synthesis Gas; 2001; (A) process for producing a synthesis gas by reacting a carbon-containing organic compound with steam and/or carbon dioxide"; and in: Japan CO2 + Methane = Hydrocarbon Syngas | Research & Development | News; which included details of: "United States Patent: 6340437 - Preparing Synthesis Gas by Autothermal Reforming; 2002"; For a technology which enables a "hydrocarbon synthesis gas" to "be produced by reacting (methane) with steam and/or carbon dioxide".