What is Foam Concrete Used For?

The secretary general of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) said recently that US economic sanctions against Venezuela have affected global energy supplies. 

He told Venezuelan media that the ECONOMIC sanctions imposed by the United States on Venezuela and other countries have seriously affected the ability to produce and export oil worldwide and violated the right of people in other countries to use energy.

Venezuela has one of the largest proven crude oil reserves in the world, but U.S. sanctions have made it impossible for Venezuela’s oil industry to consistently export reliable energy to the world, he said. Despite this, he highly appreciated the efforts of the Venezuelan oil industry to maintain concrete foaming agent are expected to increase in the future.

Foam Concrete Properties

Foam concrete is a versatile building material. It is simple to produce and relatively cheap compared with autoclaved aerated concrete. Foam concrete compounds that use fly ash in the slurry mixture are cheaper and have less impact on the environment. The density of foam concrete varies from 200kg/m3 to 1,600kg/m3, depending on the application.  Lighter products can be cut to different sizes. Although the product is considered to be a concrete form (with air bubbles instead of aggregate), its high thermal and acoustic quality makes it a distinct application from conventional concrete. 

Foam Concrete Advantage

Foam concrete is no less thermally conductive than wood — 40cm walls can withstand -30° frost. 

Foam concrete can withstand exposure to fire on one side for at least 3 hours, with an average of 5 hours. 

What is Foam Concrete Used For?

Foam concrete can be produced with dry densities of 400 to 1600kg/m3 (25lb/ft 3 to 100lb/ft 3) and 7-day strengths of approximately 1 to 10N/mm2 (145 to 1450psi) respectively.  Foam concrete is fire-resistant and its heat and sound insulation properties make it suitable for a wide range of uses, from insulating floors and roofs to void filling. It is also particularly useful for groove recovery. 

Some applications of foam concrete are: 

Bridge method/embankment 

Pipe abandonment/ring filling 

Trench backfill 

Precast block 

Prefabricated wall elements/panels 

Cast-in-place/cast-in-place walls 

Insulation compensation laying 

Insulation floor 

Insulating roof mortar 

Sunken part filling 

Groove back

A sub-base for the highway

Filling of hollow blocks

Prefabricated insulation board

Foam Concrete Trends and Development 

Until the mid-1990s, foam concrete was considered weak, non-durable, and had high shrinkage properties. This is due to the unstable foam bubbles which make foam concrete unsuitable for the production of very low density (less than 300 kg/m 3 dry density) and load-bearing structure applications. It is therefore important to ensure that the air ensnared in the foam concrete is contained in stable, very small, uniform bubbles that remain intact and isolated and do not thus increase the permeability of the cement slurry between the voids.

The development of synthase-based foaming agents, admixtures to enhance foam stability, and specialized foam generation, mixing, and pumping equipment has improved the stability of foam concrete, allowing the production of lightweight concrete with densities as low as 75 kg/ m3 and a density of only 7.5% of water. The enzyme is composed of highly active proteins from biotechnological sources other than proteolysis. In recent years, foam concrete has been widely used in highways, commercial buildings, disaster relief buildings, schools, apartments, and residential development in Germany, The United States, Brazil, Singapore, India, Malaysia, Kuwait, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Botswana, Mexico, and other countries. 

Foam concrete has been studied as a bullet trap for high-intensity US firearms training grounds. This work led to the deployment of the product SACON by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which can be transported directly to a metal recovery facility when it wears out, without the need to separate trapped bullets because the calcium carbonate in the concrete acts as a flux. 

The energy absorption capacity of foam concrete was approximated by drop tests and was found to vary between 4 and 15 MJ/m 3, depending on its density. The optimum absorption was estimated from a mixture of 1000 kg/m 3 of moderate density at a ratio of water to cement (w/c) 0.6 to 0.7. 

Concrete Foaming Agent Supplier

TRUNNANO is a reliable foaming agents supplier with over 12-year experience in nano-building energy conservation and nanotechnology development.

If you are looking for high-quality CLC foaming agents, please feel free to contact us and send an inquiry. (sales@cabr-concrete.com)

We accept payment via Credit Card, T/T, West Union, and Paypal. TRUNNANO will ship the goods to customers overseas through FedEx, DHL, by air, or by sea.

Gas supplies have been in short supply because of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.  Combined with the situation that other renewable sources cannot produce enough electricity, electricity prices have soared in many parts all over the world. For this reason, I assume the supply and prices of the concrete foaming agent would keep being influenced by the high energy prices.