Cementing Our Growth: Progressive Planet’s Showcase Station Five

Stop five on our Progressive Planet Showcase tour brings us to the research and development lab at our Kamloops headquarters.

The diatomaceous earth (DE) that comprises an integral part of Progressive Planet’s operations is mined in rock form, as we saw in Showcase Station One. After drying, the DE is then milled into multiple products for a multitude of uses.?However, milling the DE creates a large amount of very fine powder byproduct. Our legacy operations produced about 30,000 MT of DE product in 2021, generating about 50% fine powder for 50% of finished product. This powder was extruded, dried and re-crushed to turn it back into bigger rocks, consuming large amounts of energy to do so.?In 2022 and into the future, we are shifting our focus to conserving energy and minimizing waste by repurposing this fine powder for use as a supplementary cementitious material (SCM) with a new name – PozDE? SCM.

Traditionally, Portland cement is used as the binding agent in concrete mixtures. Portland cement comes with a problem, however: emissions. Producing 1 MT of Portland cement emits roughly 1 MT of CO2 into the atmosphere. SCMs can be used in the concrete mix design to reduce the required amount of Portland cement. Using PozDE? SCM reduces the energy consumption of our plant and will be used to mitigate the heavy emissions of the Portland cement it replaces - an excellent growth vertical for Progressive Planet.

SCMs also provide durability to general use cement powder, allowing increased concrete resistance to sulphates or chlorides like those found in agricultural uses and applications exposed to de-icing salts. SCMs are extremely important for industry but there is a massive shortage of them in the market today. Fly ash is the most used SCM and is being rapidly phased out in North America as it is a byproduct of coal power generation. The next most common SCM, steel slag, is also being produced less as manufacturers improve their steel-making processes to incorporate electric arc furnaces. It’s been estimated that the difference between demand and supply of concrete-grade SCMs is already greater than 25% in North America, with some of the heaviest deficits falling directly in our addressable market.

The Showcase demonstration used a 0.55 water to cement ratio, as typically seen in slabs on grade, such as underground parking garages. In our mixture, Portland cement was reduced by 30% and replaced with PozDE? SCM. We showed a large mortar cube and highlighted that when PozDE? SCM is added to Portland cement, we were able to achieve strength parity?with a full Portland cement mix within 7 days and achieved 120% strength after 28 days with 98% water demand. These are great results compared against a fly ash mixture, which doesn't reach strength parity until around 56 days – taking eight times as long!?

Our in-person display emphasized the workability and safety of PozDE? SCM.?PozDE? SCM’s ease of use allows the mortar to be quickly mixed in a few short minutes with a hand drill. Unlike highly alkaline Portland cement, PozDE? SCM is near neutral, making it so safe to handle that our visitors were encouraged to feel the texture of the PozDE? SCM bare-handed.

Now that we’ve shown promising strength and water demand results on the mortar tests, our plans are to complete concrete testing and validate the performance. Scaling PozDE? SCM production will help fill the supply-demand gap in concrete-grade SCMs and repurpose a previous waste stream into a value-added product, while reducing the energy consumption of our plant – win-win developments for Progressive Planet Solutions!