A technology company has developed a sustainable method for repurposing dredged mud from the York River, according to a recent article published in the Virginia Mercury.
Natrx, a tech company dedicated to nature-based restoration, used an ancient Roman recipe to develop a solution for Virginia's spoils of dredging. With $20 million in ready projects, Virginia's Middle Peninsula Planning District Commission and the Eastern Shore planned on dredging an enormous amount of spoils.
The problem? Clay spoils were deemed useless and expensive to get rid of.
In an effort to repurpose the clay, Natrx analyzed ancient Roman concrete for inspiration. For years, researchers have tried to figure out why ancient concrete from the Roman Empire has endured while modern concrete can crumble after a few decades.
After analyzing the dredged clay composition in conjunction with the ancient concrete recipe, researchers at Natrx converted dredged clay from the York River into a substitute for some of the cement in concrete. Dredged clay reduces the concrete's carbon footprint by nearly half and its cost by nearly two-thirds.
"Not only is it cheaper, but it is also stronger than traditional concrete," Jim Morrison wrote in the Virginia Mercury.
Natrx co-founders Leonard Nelson and Matthew Campbell worked with East Carolina University researcher Amin Akhnoukh to publish their findings.
"This process has been around for a long time and unfortunately hasn't been industrially adopted," Nelson told the Virginia Mercury.
Thanks to Natrx, Virginia now has a sustainable and cost-effective solution for its dredged clay.
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Moving forward, Natrx plans on using the dredging spoils in the concrete of their ExoForms. These patented structures are designed to create a habitat for aquatic organisms and protect shorelines from erosion.
"There's an obvious circular economy play there to replace some of that imported, high transportation-intensive cement that's high carbon with a low-carbon clay that is derived from these dredge sediments," Nelson told the Virginia Mercury.
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