VOA常速英语:研究人员称：再生混凝土时代已经来临

Concrete is the most widely used building material on Earth. While it makes modern life possible, Notre Dame professor Yahya Kurama says it also has a huge carbon footprint.
混凝土是目前世界上应用最广泛的建筑材料。尽管这种材料可以让我们享受现代生活，但圣母大学的Yahya Kurama教授却表示，混凝土会产生巨大的碳足迹。

“It’s very intensive in terms of its demands on energy, on water, on land space, everything.”
“制作混凝土时会消耗大量的能量和水资源，而利用时还会占用大块的土地空间，总之从任何方面来讲都会产生很大的浪费。”

To reduce those harms, the industry has concentrated on things like reducing concrete and concrete byproducts.
为减少上述损害，建筑产业开始将精力集中在另外一些事情上，比如减少混凝土和相关副产品的产生。

While recycled concrete is already used in sidewalks and roads, Kurama and his team, along with scientists from the University of Texas, Tyler and New Mexico State University are trying to determine if it’s strong and durable enough to construct buildings.
目前再生混凝土已经被应用于人行道和马路上，而Kurama和自己的团队，连同来自泰勒德克萨斯大学以及新墨西哥州立大学的科学家们共同合作，旨在测定该材料在用于建造房屋时，是否同样坚固耐用。

“Currently there’s a lot more supply of recycled concrete aggregates than demand.What we’re trying to do is bring up the demand and at the same time generate the engineering background that these materials can be used in a higher-level application.”
“现如今再生混凝土集料的储备量远远高于我们的需求量。因此我们现在努力要做的就是扩大需求，与此同时也要生成技术背景，明白这些材料可以进一步被应用。”

Kumara’s team is studying different recycled aggregate combinations in hopes of supplying that demand.Graduate student Michael Brandes says they’re interested in two sources of recycled concrete.
Kumara团队目前正在研究不同种类的再生集料组合，希望能够满足需求。Michael Brandes是一名研究生，他表示，团队现在对再生混凝土的两种来源颇有兴趣。

“The traditional RCA, or recycled concrete as we call it,is something that comes from a bridge that was demolished, a building that was demolished.And basically what that means is it has the opportunity to accumulate a lot of other materials.But we don’t want to have to sort that out, because it’s an added cost in using the material.”
传统的RCA，也就是我们所说的再生混凝土，这种材料来自于被拆毁的大桥和建筑物。从根本上来说，这意味着RCA有机会积聚成诸多其他材料。不过我们不想把它们进行分类，因为这相当于我们在利用该材料的时候又增加了成本。

The other source is rejected material from a precast plant, which has no construction debris mixed in.The team is testing both types of recycled cement to determine durability and life-cycle costs as well as having how they might engineer around any differences between the recycled materials and traditional cement.Currently, without that research, federal building codes bar its use in constructing buildings.
而RCA的另一个来源则是预制场所产生的筛余废料，这些废料当中不掺杂建筑垃圾。Kumara团队现在正在对两种回收水泥进行测试，以计算其耐用性和生命周期成本；同时他们也在围绕回收材料和传统水泥之间的区别，商讨该如何来进行规划。当前如果没有这项研究，联邦建筑规范就会禁止在建造房屋时使用该材料。

Kurama says that recycled cement reduces concrete’s environmental impact by about half,and in some instances recycled concrete is proved even stronger than its natural counterpart.
Kurama称，回收水泥能将混凝土对环境的影响减少一半，而经证明，在某些情况下，回收混凝土的坚固程度比其天然对应物还要高。

“Nobody’s going to see an immediate effect of this,but if you think about the impact of our built infrastructure 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, 50 years down the road,this will make a big impact in terms of reducing that impact of concrete on our environment.”
“我们所做的努力可能没有立竿见影的效果，但如果你设想一下我们的建筑设施在未来20年、30年、40年甚至是50年以后会产生的影响，这对于减轻混凝土对环境所造成的危害意义重大。”

And that’s good news,because it’s expected the world will need about 4.4 billion metric tons of concrete a year by the year 2050.
这确实是个好消息，因为据估计，截止到2050年，全世界每年将消耗掉约44亿公吨的混凝土。

For VOA news, I’m Erika Celeste in South Bend, Indiana.
VOA新闻，艾瑞卡.西莱斯特于印第安纳州南本德为您播报。