DrRupert Myers

OVERVIEW

Our global growing society is demanding more products that are increasingly complex, leading to more severe and varied environmental problems; problems that appear to be becoming increasingly difficult to solve. Dr Myers and his team quantify and analyse product systems and the economy to clarify how society could use resources to achieve sustainable development. Results are used to guide technology development in the laboratory. Research areas being investigated include:

CO2 MINERALISATION

CO2 mineralisation describes the reaction between a metal (hydr)oxide and carbon dioxide to form carbonate solid phases. The most important example of this is CaO + CO2 -> CaCO3. There is huge interest in exploiting this chemistry to reduce the carbon footprint of concrete materials and profit from recycling wastes, especially concrete demolition waste. Dr Myers leads research to establish the potential of CO2 mineralisation options and develop novel technologies in the Centre for Infrastructure Materials.

BAYESIAN MATERIAL FLOW ANALYSIS

The more reliably and completely the economy can be described, the more effective interventions can be designed to mitigate our environmental impact. Collectively, individuals know a huge amount of information on the economy; however, most of this information is never combined. Our quantitative models of the economy remain limited. Dr Myers is leading the application of Bayesian statistics to model how resources are used in the economy, which has the potential to comprehensively quantify economic systems despite the existence of substantial data gaps.

SUSTAINABLE MATERIALS SELECTION

Concrete structures are virtually everywhere, often in critical infrastructure and buildings that need to operate safely for many decades. The drive to reduce the carbon footprint of concrete is changing its raw materials e.g. through cement substitution, which affects its properties. Performance cannot be guaranteed or easily determined for emerging concretes that have not been validated over many years, which limits their speed of implementation. Inspired by life cycle impact assessment methodology, Dr Myers is developing a radically novel approach to solving this problem that predicts deterioration of concrete structures from first principles, and that is generalisable and does not require massive quantities of empirical data. He is also investigating the application of this approach to other materials.

BIODIVERSE SOCIOECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Most urban environments (e.g. cities) have emerged over many years of development, often without consideration or prioritisation of the biodiversity that they (can) support. Despite this, some urban environments are exceptional habitats for certain species: peregrine falcons in Manhattan; ring-necked parakeets in London. This biodiversity provides a range of services to urban populations. Dr Myers is developing methodology to quantify the impacts of biodiversity-supporting infrastructures, to more consciously create and manage biodiversity in urban environments.

THERMODYNAMIC MODELLING

Thermodynamic modelling refers to methodology that uses thermodynamics to predict phase and component speciation under (near-)equilibrium conditions. It has been shown to reliably predict the chemistry and volumetric properties of hydrated Portland cement, and is routinely used in academic and industrial research. Dr Myers is developing this methodology so it can be applied to more exotic and emerging cements, including low carbon cements for construction and more effective barrier materials for safer storage of radioactive waste. This work is undertaken in the Centre for Infrastructure Materials.