Suitability of BS EN 197-1 CEM II and CEM V cement for production of low carbon concrete Mukesh Limbachiya, Sevket Can Bostanci ⇑ , Hsein Kew School of Civil Engineering & Construction, Kingston University, London KT1 2EE, UK highlights  CEM II and CEM V cement concretes reduce the ECO 2 and cost of concrete.  Silica fume is an effective additional cementitious constituent in producing concrete with lower ECO 2 .  FA utilisation reduced workability over time significantly.  CEM II/B-M cement concretes with higher w/c ratios indicated improved pore structure.  There is a potential to use CEM II and CEM V cement concretes in structural applications. article info Article history: Received 8 May 2014 Received in revised form 9 August 2014 Accepted 23 August 2014 Keywords: Fly ash Ground granulated blast-furnace slag Silica fume Sustainability Durability Mechanical properties ECO 2 emissions Carbonation Drying shrinkage abstract The environmental destruction of global warming as a result of excessive releasing carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) in the atmosphere through burning of fossil fuels is of significant interest to scientific community as well as decision makers and general public worldwide. Electricity generation, transportation, industrial activ- ities and land use changes have been identified as the main contributors. On the other hand, it is widely reported that the concrete industry contributes around 7% to total global CO 2 emissions and Portland cement (PC) accounts for 90% of this. A number of researches have been undertaken to address this issue and over the past few years‘ industry have successfully implemented a series of innovative techniques for minimising its environmental impact quite successfully. The concrete construction industry is continued to put a greater emphasis on adopting more sustainable practices. In keeping with this, reported work was carried out to assess the environmental impact of BS EN 197-1 binary and ternary cement concretes and thus their suitability for use in low carbon concrete construction. Results of this research show that the use of binary and ternary cements has a potential to reduce over- all embodied CO 2 (ECO 2 ) emissions and cost in equal design strength concrete. Studies investigating engi- neering (compressive cube and cylinder compressive strength, flexural strength, drying shrinkage) and durability properties (initial surface absorption, carbonation) were found to provide comparable and improved results comparing to conventional PC concrete mixes design for equal strength. Ó 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-SA license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/). 1. Introduction The use of binary and ternary systems in concrete production has been acknowledged to enhance engineering and durability per- formance due to finer characteristics of cementitious constituents resulting in dense pore structure [1]. Most of the available studies on this matter focus on mechanical and durability properties of these concretes. However, there is little or no information available on the environmental (ECO 2 emissions) and economical assess- ments associated with the performances of binary and ternary cement concretes. Global warming is a growing concern for the human race as a result of releasing significant amount of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, and CO 2 is being the heaviest contributor of the global warming amongst greenhouse gases due to human activities such as burning of fossil fuels. 500 million tones of CO 2 are released to the atmosphere annually throughout all the activities in the UK. The impact of concrete industry to national CO 2 emissions was estimated around 2.6% in the year 2002 [2]. Additionally, cement manufacture accounts less than 2% national CO 2 emissions [3]. There are 100 million tons of concrete being used and there are 12 million tonnes of PC are manufactured annually which nearly 11 million tonnes of Portland cement were sold in the UK [4]. Current applications are no longer appropriate to define as environmentally friendly and the UK concrete industry and http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2014.08.061 0950-0618/Ó 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-SA license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/). ⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 7540493305. E-mail address: S.Bostanci@kingston.ac.uk (S.C. Bostanci). Construction and Building Materials 71 (2014) 397–405 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Construction and Building Materials journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/conbuildmat