Green Cement made from waste materials could help cut carbon emissions and fight climate change. Christened Gen X cement, the new construction material would help mitigate adverse environmental impact, researchers said.

Scientists working for two years with wastes including rice husk, fly ash, lime stone dust, ground slang (a steel manufacturing plant waste), marble dust, quarry dust and paper mill wastes are close to developing Green Cement (Gen X cement) under UK-India Education and Research Initiative (UKIERI).

"The carbon emissions in year 2025 are likely to be 10bnt-almost equal to cement demand during that year. Joint research to develop GenX cement is about 90 per cent complete and will provide techniques for optimising concrete for the UK and India environments in terms of maximum performance at minimum environmental impact," researchers gathered at the National Institute of Technology (NIT) said  on Monday.

"The technologies developed will pass through British Standards and Bureau of Indian Standards before being put to common use or infrastructure development," Dr Ravindra K Dhir, Director, Concrete Technology Unit (CTU) of UK’s University of Dundee and the man behind the project told Hindustan Times.

"The project will utilise UK£15m world class concrete science, environment and technology base of CTU and UK£7mstrong materials, modelling and structural systems capabilities of the Indian team," he added.

The participating institutes include UK’s University of Dundee and University of Bath and India’s - Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, Birla Institute of Technology and Sciences, Pilani, four NITs (Jalandhar, Jaipur, Surat and Surathkal) and Guru Nanak Dev Engineering College, Ludhiana.

Dundee University’s Dr Moray D Newlands said the use of demolition waste (buildings or structures) is an aggregate for creation of Gen X cement. "We are encouraging selection of appropriate aggregates to develop performance based specifications," he said.