Pozzotive provides ground-breaking solutions to problems in three major intersecting industries: Recycling (unwanted glass), Concrete (cement CO2 emissions), and Pozzolan (shortages).
Glass, long valued as premium and safe packaging material, is choking the recycling streams across the US. Of the 11 MM tons of bottle glass generated in the US, about 3 million tons are repurposed (primarily to bottles and fiberglass), despite the fact that 90% of consumers want glass recycled. Much of the remaining 8 MM tons of glass—more than 100 million bottles each day—are trucked long distances to increasingly overburdened and expensive landfills.
Pozzotive has developed a process to efficiently convert this growing inventory of glass into sustainable and environmentally-beneficial building materials. Using an innovative, patented process to separate, clean and mill waste glass, Pozzotive-branded products are manufactured in a tightly-controlled closed-loop circuit that yields high performance pozzolans, industrial fillers and abrasive media.
Pozzotive utilizes any size and color of glass and ceramics which means it can use virtually all available waste glass, unlike primary end users such as bottle manufacturers who require color segregation, ceramic removal, and a minimum cullet size. Pozzotive also has a proven solution for previously unusable recycled CRT panel glass, window glass and porcelain ceramic fixtures.
Pozzotive raw material is sourced regionally, it is manufactured regionally and is utilized regionally, resulting in the perfect circular economy that minimizes costly and polluting transportation requirements. Furthermore, locally-situated Pozzotive plants will provide real solutions to markets where glass-recycling is in distress and sustainable construction is a priority.
Concrete’s versatility, durability and insulating qualities make it the most widely-used construction material worldwide. Critical to the production of concrete is portland cement that not only requires burning a significant volume of fuel, but the lime formation that results releases additional CO2 into the atmosphere. Based upon the sheer demand for cement in concrete production (about 100 million tons of cement just in the US market annually), portland cement production now accounts for approximately 7% of all carbon emissions annually worldwide. As such, the industry continues to seek major new initiatives to help green out its product lines.
In both lab testing and real-life applications, concrete made with Pozzotive is demonstrably higher-performing than conventional concrete across a range of key attributes. Importantly, it has greater resistance to sulfate attack, a problem in coastal areas and in waters containing sulfur compounds; it has extreme resistance to chloride penetration that results from the application of road salts to melt ice and snow; and it reduces moisture penetration which significantly suppresses the negative effects of freeze thaw cycles, all of which make it an ideal material for transportation infrastructure.
Concrete with a Pozzotive admixture requires less water, has improved aggregate adhesion, greater tensile strength, and lasts longer. Based on independent lab-testing, concrete with 40% Pozzotive is projected to last more than five time longer than conventional mixes, offering major savings in concrete replacement costs. From an appearance standpoint, Pozzotive in concrete prevents efflorescence which is an undesirable whitish, powdery deposit on the surface of concrete, and its brighter, whiter color makes it optimal for use in the premium white cement market.
The EPA estimates that one ton of cement production generates about one ton of CO2. Pozzotive Pozzolan can replace up to 50% of Portland cement in a concrete mix as a supplementary cementitious material (SCM), significantly reducing CO2 emissions caused by cement manufacture on nearly a ton-for-ton basis. By comparison, it takes about six tons of bottle-to-bottle recycling to save about a ton of CO2, but just about one ton of bottle-to-Pozzotive Pozzolan to save that same one ton of CO2!
Pozzolans, or supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs), are chemically-reactive components of high-performance concrete, binding aggregates to form this exceptionally strong material.
The estimated use of pozzolans in the US is about 17 MM tons/year and the most common pozzolan used in the concrete industry is fly ash, which is a by-product of coal-burning power plants.
Recent environmental regulations placed on coal-fired plants and cost effective alternative energy sources have caused plant shutdowns and conversions to natural gas, thereby reducing the supply of fly ash and increasing the need for long distance trucking. Furthermore, chemicals added to control pollutants in coal burning exhaust air are diminishing ash quality and usability.
As a manufactured product, Pozzotive’s particle size, and thus its exceptional pozzolanic reactivity, is tightly controlled, yielding a reliable product, batch after batch. Pozzotive is also made entirely from a clean and chemically consistent feedstock, recycled glass, so it contains no contaminants that are harmful to concrete quality, such as carbon and other mineral discolorants. Pozzotive is nontoxic, and is free of crystalline silica and heavy metals, making it a safer-to-use alternative to traditional pozzolans.
Pozzotive fills fly ash supply voids, particularly in many markets where glass is readily available and ash is trucked in at a premium. This reduces transportation-related CO2 emissions as well as trucking costs, and reduces the excess waste glass burdening municipalities across the US. Pozzotive provides the industry not only with a new high performance, environmentally-friendly pozzolan, but one where both the feedstock and end users are local.