‘StarCrete’ is Twice as Strong as Earth’s Traditional Concrete

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A photo of Starcrete. Credit: Aled Roberts

Key points:

  • Scientists have created a new material, dubbed StarCrete, which is made from Mars dust, potato starch and a pinch of salt.
  • The material, used to make concrete, exhibited a compressive strength twice that of traditional concrete.
  • If used on Earth, StarCrete would greatly reduce the CO2 emissions associated with concrete production.

Scientists at the University of Manchester have switched from using astronauts’ blood as a concrete binding agent to potato starch. In addition to being much more practical, the concrete made with potato starch is twice as strong as previous versions, and even more so than traditional concrete.

Ordinary concrete has a compressive strength of 32 Megapascals (MPa). Meanwhile, the concrete the researchers created previously with astronaut blood and urine had a compressive strength of 40 MPa. But, when the team used simulated Martian soil mixed with potato starch and a pinch of salt, the new material—dubbed StarCrete—exhibited a comprehensive strength of 72 MPa.

“Since we will be producing starch as food for astronauts, it made sense to look at that as a binding agent rather than human blood,” said lead researcher Aled Roberts, research fellow at the Future Biomanufacturing Research Hub. “Also, current building technologies still need many years of development and require considerable energy and additional heavy processing equipment, which adds cost and complexity to a mission. StarCrete doesn’t need any of this, so it simplifies the mission and makes it cheaper and more feasible.”

In their study, published in Open Engineering, the team calculated that a sack (25 Kg) of dehydrated potatoes contain enough starch to produce almost half a ton of StarCrete, which is equivalent to over 213 bricks’ worth of material. For comparison, a 3-bedroom house takes roughly 7,500 bricks to build. Additionally, they discovered that a common salt, magnesium chloride, obtainable from the Martian surface or from the tears of astronauts, significantly improved the strength of StarCrete.

The next stages of this project are to translate StarCrete from the lab to application. Roberts and his team have recently launched a start-up company, DeakinBio, which is exploring ways to improve StarCrete so that it could also be used in a terrestrial setting.

If used on earth, StarCrete could offer a greener alternative to traditional concrete. Cement and concrete account for about 8% of global CO2 emissions due to the very high firing temperatures needed. StarCrete, on the other hand, can be made in an ordinary oven or microwave at normal home baking temperatures, reducing energy demand and costs.

 

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