Accelerated Design and Deployment of Low-Carbon Concrete for Data Centers
Xiou Ge, Richard Goodwin, Haizi Yu, Pablo Romero, Omar Abdelrahman, Amruta Sudhalkar, Julius Kusuma, Ryan Cialdella, Nishant Garg, Lav R. Varshney
Abstract
Concrete is the most widely used engineered material in the world with more than 10 billion tons produced annually. Unfortunately, with that scale comes a significant burden in terms of energy, water, and release of greenhouse gases and other pollutants; indeed 8% of worldwide carbon emissions are attributed to the production of cement, a key ingredient in concrete. As such, there is interest in creating concrete formulas that minimize this environmental burden, while satisfying engineering performance requirements including compressive strength. Specifically for computing, concrete is a major ingredient in the construction of data centers.