Simultaneously to the constitution of the LTC-Green Concrete, the centers based on the Basque Country (CFM, TECNALIA, CMP-EHU, MPC, DIPC and POLYMAT) are recognized as Baskrete Joint Research Lab. These centers have a long-standing track record of collaboration activities (joint projects, articles, students, workshops…) that led to the creation by all of them of the Basque Initiative for Cement and Concrete Research (BASKRETE).
BASKRETE is an initiative, recognized as an independent operative unit within the Euskampus project, that pursues to agglutinate all the research carried out by the aforementioned centers in the field of cement science and nanotechnology, in order to foster collaboration and gain critical mass.
It is noteworthy to mention the computational study on cementitious nanotubes based on portlandite and tobermorite as ideal reinforcements for cement, like the perfect example of the success of this collaboration. Such study was carried out within the framework of a PhD. thesis of the UPV/EHU supervised by A. Ayuela (CSIC / DIPC) and J.S. Dolado (TECNALIA, former affiliation). The obtained results were first published in the high impact journal, Advanced Materials, and then, gave place to a collaboration between TECNALIA and one of the most important world cement producers that led to a joint patent request on the synthesis process and applications of such nanotubes (WO2017114896-A1).
In addition to this example of good practice in scientific and technological development, since 2014, 47 scientific articles have been published within the framework of BASKRETE, being about half of them coauthored by researchers of a least two of the institutions that compose it.
For the same period, 2 PhD. students have successfully finished their theses, while 3 more will do it in the two coming years.
All this research work would not have been possible without the commitment of the whole consortium as well as the support from public bodies (Basque Goverment, Spanish Government and E.U.) and Euskampus Fundazioa.
It is worth stressing the projects: SUPER (KK-2016/00060), INNOVACONCRETE (GRANT AGREEMENT NUMBER: 760858), E-CRETE (RTI2018-098554-B-I00) and NRG-STORAGE (GRANT AGREEMENT NUMBER 870114) that just started in April 2020.
Finally, in terms of diffusion activities, it must be highlighted the series of workshops BASKRETE Open Days, that were held every year from 2012-2015 as a forum for exchange of ideas with the industry, and the congress “SCIENCE OF CEMENT AND RELATED COMPLEX MATERIALS (SCRCM19)” that took place last year within the framework of the 2019 summer courses of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU).