A group of researchers in South Korea have developed a way to reuse fly ash from power plants to make concrete.<br />Park Se-young has more. <br />Thermal power plants in Korea discharge eight million tons of fly ash per year.<br />Some is used to make concrete, but over a million tons of the waste is buried underground because its low reactivity makes it difficult to improve its compressive strength.<br />Now, Korean researchers have found a way to increase the strength of fly ash by mixing it with chemical additives.<br />This also reduced the weight of fly ash, …and dramatically reduced the time it takes to solidify …from a month to just a day.<br /><br />"Adding a small amount of sugar to the binder that I developed delays the rapid stiffening, and I found that it also significantly improved the compressive strength in a short time."<br /><br />The new technology is a realization of an idea the student had during his third year of college.<br />It required an unusual research method, but five years of untiring work with guidance from his professors resulted in the development of the technology<br /><br />"I think the professors had a way of listening carefully to undergraduates, and this, combined with our stellar research environment, brought good results."<br /><br />The technology has been sold to an eco-friendly building materials company for nearly 90-thousand U.S. dollars as well as one-point-five percent of total sales.<br />Park Se-young, Arirang News. <br />
