Eco Material’s products are routinely specified in the construction of large-scale infrastructure and other beneficial use projects – not only to lower the carbon footprint of these structures, but to reduce material costs and provide a stronger, more durable concrete. Following are a small sample of the projects for which Eco Material has supplied its sustainable cement alternatives:
Project Name: Wilshire Grand Center
Location: Los Angeles
Built: 2016
Product: Class F Fly Ash
Wilshire Grand Center, which houses the 890-room InterContinental Los Angeles hotel, is a 73-story, 1,100-foot-high skyscraper – the tallest building west of the Mississippi River. Eco Material supplied Class F fly ash used in the placement of 82 million lbs. of concrete to create a 17.5-foot-thick foundation supporting the building. The 25 percent fly ash mix was designed to achieve a compressive strength of 6000 psi in 90 days. Crews placed 21,200 cubic yards of concrete for the foundation – the largest concrete placement in world history to that point, as attested by Guinness World Records. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons.)
Project Name: Wacker Drive Renovation (East-West Portion)
Location: Chicago
Built: 2003
Product: Class F Fly Ash
Class F fly ash was used in the concrete mix for the renovation of Wacker Drive, the arterial road servicing Chicago’s downtown Loop. The concrete deck of the two-level viaduct, which handles tens of thousands of vehicles daily, had been considerably degraded after decades of heavy traffic and the application of harsh de-icing chemicals. Eco Material supplied Class F fly ash for the concrete mix to help achieve compressive strengths of between 6000 and 9500 psi in 28 days and chloride permeability in ponding tests of less than 2000 coulombs to prevent the ingress of de-icing salts into the concrete. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons.)
Project Name: San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge Eastern Span
Location: San Francisco
Built: 2013
Product: Class F Fly Ash
Eco Material furnished Class F fly ash to allow substitution rates of between 15 and 50 percent for the footings, high salt zones, and other mass concrete components in the reconstruction of the eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. Approximately 60,000 tons of fly ash were used in 30 different mix designs to achieve Caltrans’ exacting seismic standards. The span’s 1.2-mile elevated section of roadway, designed for a 150-year service life, incorporates over 12 million cubic feet of concrete and 452 precast concrete sections weighing 300 to 800 tons apiece.
Project Name: Populus Hotel
Location: Denver
Built: 2024
Product: Class F Fly Ash
Populus is the first carbon-positive hotel in the United States. That is, it is the first hotel that will sequester more carbon (in biomass and soil) than the combined embodied and operational footprints of the building across its life cycle. To assist in lowering the building’s embodied carbon, Class F fly ash supplied by Eco Material Technologies was used in substitution of 33-34 percent of the cement in the concrete mixes. Use of low-carbon concrete reduced CO2 emissions by 24 percent compared to regional averages – the equivalent of eliminating more than 1.5 million miles driven by an average passenger vehicle. (Photo: [c] Studio Gang.)
Project Name: Hoover Dam Bypass
Location: Clark County, Nevada; Mohave County, Arizona
Built: 2010
Product: Class F Fly Ash
The Mike O’Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge is a concrete arch bridge spanning the Colorado River between Arizona and Nevada. Located 1,500 feet downstream of the Hoover Dam, the bridge rerouted US 93 from its previous location along the top of the dam. Designers specified that concrete would need to achieve compressive strength of 10,000 psi in 56 days and thermal control to minimize cracking. Class F fly ash supplied by Eco Material Technologies was used in ratios of 200 lbs. of fly ash to 800 lbs. of cement per cubic yard – combined with a very low water-to-cement ratio of under 0.31. The mixture typically achieved strengths of 4000 psi in a little more than a day and over 12,000 psi in 56 days. (Photo: CC BY-SA 4.0 – Mario Roberto Durán Ortiz.)
Project Name: Olivenhain Dam
Location: San Diego County, California
Built: 2003
Product: Class F Fly Ash
Olivenhain Dam was the first roller compacted concrete (RCC) gravity dam in California and the tallest in North America at the time of its construction. Modeled after several other RCC dams worldwide, a high percentage of fly ash – 65 percent – was used to achieve exceptional long-term strength, lift bonding, durability, and a high degree of impermeability. Class F fly ash supplied by Eco Material Technologies was used in all phases of construction, from testing to completion of the dam. The final mix – 1.42 million yards of concrete – contained up to 216 pounds of fly ash per yard of RCC. (Photo: San Diego Water Authority.)
Project Name: Salt Lake City Main Library
Location: Salt Lake City
Built: 2003
Product: Micron3 Refined Pozzolan
Salt Lake City’s main library is a five-story, 240,000-square-foot building incorporating 44,960 cubic yards of concrete. The project’s ready-mix concrete supplier proposed Eco Material Technologies’ Micron3 for concrete columns that had design strength requirements of 8000 psi. The product has a mean particle diameter of 3 micrometers, which contributes to high packing density, increased pozzolanic reactivity at an early age, and high strength and durability – particularly with respect to corrosion, alkali-silica reaction, and sulfate attack. Micron3’s light color also helped provide color continuity between the columns and horizontal structural members, which were cast from different strength mixtures. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons.)
Project Name: Gross Reservoir Expansion Project
Location: Boulder County, Colorado
Completion Date: 2027
Product: Class F Fly Ash
Gross Reservoir Dam is a 340-foot-high concrete structure that holds 440 surface area acres of water and supplies Boulder County and the city of Denver with drinking water. After recognizing an imbalance in its overall water system, Denver Water decided to raise the dam 131 feet to a total height of 471 feet, nearly tripling the water storage capacity. Denver Water is using roughly 90,000 tons of Class F fly ash sourced by Eco Material Technologies to replace about 65 percent of the portland cement in the concrete mix. The utility selected fly ash as the supplementary cementitious material to make the concrete mix more workable, meet the requirements to reduce heat of hydration, and reduce the effects of autogenous shrinkage. (Photo: Denver Water.)
Project Name: Lake Williams Dam Renovation
Location: York County, Pennsylvania; Adams County, Pennsylvania
Built: 2023
Product: Class F Fly Ash
Lake Williams Dam provides water for 200,000 residents of York and Adams County, Pa. To comply with Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection Division of Dam Safety requirements, the dam was overhauled to give it adequate spillway capacity to safely pass a Spillway Design Flood equivalent to 100 percent of the Probable Maximum Flood. Given the requirement for high-strength concrete, and the potential for excessive heat of hydration in the mass placement, specifiers opted for a concrete mix with fly ash sourced from Eco Material’s Montour County, Pa., monofill. Placement of the 46,000 CY of roller compacted concrete utilized 5,200 tons of fly ash at 50 percent substitution for cement. (Photo: York Water.)
Project Name: Near-Zero-Carbon, 3D-Printed Houses
Location: Round Top, Texas
Built: 2023
Product: PozzoCEM Vite®
In 2023, Eco Material Technologies supplied PozzoCEM Vite®, a near-zero-carbon, longer-lasting and durable cement alternative, for the 3D printing of affordable houses at The Casitas @ The Halles, in Round Top, Texas. PozzoCEM Vite® replaced 100 percent of the ordinary portland cement (OPC) that would commonly be used in the concrete mix, decreasing emissions by 92 percent and requiring a setting time of just 2-3 minutes. Construction crews employed a mobile, small-footprint construction printer and mixing system to achieve industry-leading building speeds and quality at a fraction of the cost that would have been incurred if building by traditional means. (Photo: Hive3D.)
Project Name: Downtown Aquarium
Location: Denver, Colorado
Built: 1999
Product: Class F Fly Ash
Denver’s Downtown Aquarium—the largest aquarium between Chicago and California—is a 107,000-square-foot building that boasts 1 million gallons of water for its fresh and saltwater fish and other marine life. Eco Material supplied Class F fly ash in high performance concrete for both the structure and its saltwater tanks. The concrete mixes used up to 30 percent fly ash to achieve the specified performance of 8000 psi at 28 days, low permeability, low drying shrinkage, and reduced heat of hydration required for quality in-place concrete. In addition, the aquarium’s 65,000 square feet of decorative fabricated rockwork and 800 fabricated trees used approximately 800 cubic yards of shotcrete designed with 30 percent Class F fly ash. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons.)
Project Name: Fort Mandan Visitor Center
Location: Washburn, North Dakota
Built: 2001
Product: Fly Ash
Fort Mandan Visitor Center is a 5,200 square-foot facility that educates thousands of guests each year about the journey of two famous American explorers in North Dakota. Located at Fort Mandan, where Lewis and Clark spent their winter of 1804-1805 on the banks of the Missouri River, the center used fly ash supplied by Eco Material for a variety of building materials: fly ash based mortar, fly ash based stucco, fly ash backed carpets, and high volume fly ash concrete. Visitors to the center gain an appreciation for natural resources, recycling, coal mines, and power plants, and their contributions to the American way of life—as well as learning about American Indian life and customs and Lewis & Clark’s own experience. (Photo: North Dakota Parks and Recreation.)
Project Name: Plaquemines Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) Export Facility
Location: Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana
Built: 2023
Product: Fly Ash
The Plaquemines Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) Export Facility sits on a 600-plus acre site, holds four 200,000 cubic meter full containment LNG storage tanks and exports natural gas to countries like Germany and Poland. Eco Material supplied an estimated 63,000 tons of fly ash from the Prairie State Generating Station to strengthen an estimated 750,000 yards of concrete during the project’s initial phase of construction. Eco’s New Orleans barge terminal provided 8-10 tanker loads of fly ash daily, while the onsite batch plants had 65 mixer trucks dedicated to the project. The facility’s protective containment wall, which is five times the size of the Eiffel Tower, used fly ash to help strengthen the concrete that safeguards the facility against hurricanes and flooding. (Photo: Venture Global.)
Project Name: Point Mugu Naval Airstrip
Location: Point Mugu, California
Built: 1990s
Product: Class F Fly Ash
To build a high-quality airstrip that can handle 200 touch-and-go landings performed nightly by 25-ton FA-18 and E-5 fighter bombers, the U.S. Navy chose a concrete mix with 30 percent Class F fly ash. Eco Material provided the ash for the airstrip’s 565-foot, non-jointed placement that can hold up to repetitive impact loads, maintain surface durability and not deteriorate or crack excessively. The decision to use Eco’s fly ash both reduced the CO2 released into the air and improved the airstrip’s durability by mitigating the alkali-silica-reactive aggregates in the region. Eco’s fly ash achieved an average compressive strength of 5000 psi and provided the needed workability for the low slump, low shrinkage, low permeability concrete mix. (Photo: Naval Base Ventura County.)
Project Name: Two Folsom Project
Location: San Francisco, California
Built: 2001
Product: Class F Fly Ash
The 2 Folsom project in San Francisco encompasses many green building practices and technologies. The 15-story, 540,000-square-foot building is the headquarters for the Gap Inc., a company with a corporate commitment to the environment. Eco Material provided Class F fly ash used for 12,000 cubic yards of high-volume fly ash (HVFA) concrete in the shear wall foundation, foundations, basement perimeter walls, columns, curbs and pads, and metal deck slabs. Fly ash content ranged from 20 percent to 50 percent in these applications, and roughly 2,800 tons of CO2 emissions were eliminated and 2,500 tons of fly ash were diverted from landfills. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons.)