Sand for civil construction is running out in many places of the world - Solution UHPC Desert Sand Binder + Nature Desert sand

Sand consumption today

In more and more parts of the world, the availability of sand is becoming increasingly difficult or even impossible for the construction industry.
Gigantic sales are now being made with sand.
Millions of tons of sand are transported to the oceans each year, and demand will continue to rise.

Example

• Over 47 billion tons of sand are mined annually
• For a standard house you need approx. 200 to of sand
• For 1 kilometre highway you need approx. 30000 to of sand
• Global sand business is 70 billion US Dollar/year

Types of sand extraction

• Sand mines
• Sand from rivers
• Beach Sand
• Sand mining in coastal area

 

 

WPE DK is manufacturer of UHPC Desert Sand Binder for more than 10 years. This binder system is mixed only with desert sand and a little water. Now there is the 3rd development stage of UHPC Desert Sand binder. This new generation differs significantly from the 1st generation in strength, workability, sustainability and much lower CO2 footprint. The latest generation can also be produced on site with local raw materials without any problems. 

For us as WPE DK, the sustainable future has begun with desert sand.

WPE DK International

Phone: 0049 176 601 73146
E-mail: info@wpe-dk.dk
Homepage: www.wpe-dk.com

UHPC Aggregate - Mining of Nature Corundum in Zimbabwe

After a hard day in the corundum mine, blasting, grinding and transporting, we earned a cold beer by the river. 

 

 

 

 

 

Of course, with a proper distance from the shore. Some river dwellers can really be very unpleasant. On
the way to the river we found some interesting minerals here and there.

 

 

 

 

 

 WPE DK International

Phone: 0049 176 601 73146
E-mail: ber@wpe-dk.dk
Homepage: www.wpe-dk.com

                                                                                         

Further development of HPC and UHPC binder systems for the African continent with African raw materials

Today we are starting a new UHPC development project that is unusual for us. With our friend and business partner Gordon Viol we are going to Africa, more precisely to Zimbabwe.
Gordon Viol has a mine where he mines natural corundum. Natural corundum is a very interesting material and important aggregate for some of our UHPC concrete systems. We want to have a look at the mining of natural corundum. 

But we also want to learn about local building materials and traditional building methods. How can we integrate these local materials in our HPC and UHPC concrete systems?

What are the requirements for building materials in Africa? What cement qualities are available here? How are these materials processed? It is exciting to learn about all this. Sustainable building materials, nature building materials and the processing of these building materials are at the top of our priority list for development projects. We already have many ideas. As always, we are ready to go unconventional ways. For example, we want to combine clay and earth with our UHPC binder systems. We already know very well from desert sand that it is possible to produce high-quality concrete with it. We are looking for new materials that can be combined with our existing binder systems or with binder systems yet to be developed. These binding systems should be processable under the local environmental conditions. 

For this project we want to take three weeks on site. Afterwards, we will evaluate all findings and materials in our development laboratory near Flensburg. We will report on this development project in loose order.

 

WPE DK International

Phone: 0049 176 601 73146
E-mail: ber@wpe-dk.dk
Homepage: www.wpe-dk.com

We increase the sustainability of UHPC

With our high-performance UHPC products, we started

using sustainable products years ago. We are also

increasingly focusing on sustainability when it comes

to units for our UHPC binders.

One example is corundum, which we use as an aggregate,

among other things. Corundum can be produced as

synthetic corundum with very high energy consumption

or can be mined as natural corundum in open-cast mining.

We have chosen natural corundum for more than 15 years.

Together with our partner in Africa, we pay attention to a

nature-friendly mining and an equally nature-friendly

restoration of the surface areas. The natural corundum

mined by our partner has proven to be an almost perfect

unit for our UHPC over many hundreds of applications

in the offshore industry, architecture, wear protection

and security industry.

Another problematic aggregate of quartz sand, we can

completely replace today with desert sand, including

from Africa. The technical values ​​of desert sand

concrete are far above the best standard concrete.

In our opinion, it is not necessary to destroy beaches

and rivers by sand mining. The cost of desert sand

mining is many times less than the predatory mining

of river sand or beach sand.

As far as the reinforcement systems or fiber systems

are concerned, nature offers us very sustainable

products that can be used in combination with

high-quality UHPC binder systems to create a perfect

sustainable product.

Our goal is always to produce UHPC binder systems

so flexibly that we can always use a high proportion

of local raw materials.

WPE DK International

Phone: 0049 176 601 73146
E-mail: info@wpe-dk.dk
Homepage: www.wpe-dk.com

 

UHPC Desert sand binder - Local Concrete for Africa

Almost four years ago we developed a UHPC Desert cement binder to process desert sand into a concrete with very high strength values. Only cement binders, water and desert sand are necessary for this. For mixing a standard concrete mixer is needed. The focus of binder development two years ago was on the professional construction industry.

In discussions with architects and organizations operating in Africa we were asked, if we could develop a simple, not so high-quality version of this binder that can support the traditional simple
constructions of the rural population. After some
discussion, a list of requirements for this new
binder was created with which we now work in
our lab. UHPC binders were originally developed
with the aim of achieving an extremely high level
of strength. Then we discovered with our UHPC
binder the incredible combination possibilities
with a variety of natural materials.


Our UHPC binders can perfectly support or
replace wood, straw, loam and clay constructions in terms of their strength and resistance to high
UHPC can also be easily combined with recycled material. It can be made of furniture and sanitary equipment. UHPC concrete is not flammable, which contributes to the safety of the accommodation.

The aim of our current binder development is to
drastically reduce binder costs, to keep the
mixing procedure as simple as possible, to
drastically reduce the proportion of binder in the
overall mix, to reduce possible material transports,
to enable new material combinations with local
raw materials and to preserve as many
properties of UHPC as possible, temperatures and high solar radiation. UHPC binders are completely waterproof, even in very thin layers, do not rot and provide safe protection against termites.

There is also the possibility to use local cement for the production of UHPC Desert Sand Binder in addition to the local desert sand. For this we would have to test local cements for their suitability for our UHPC binder.