Producer Prices in March – Gypsum Continues to Rise « Eye on Housing
With respect to building materials, gypsum prices continue to be the main driver for residential construction cost increases in 2012, rising 2.2 percent in March, after increases of 5.9 percent and 5.1 percent in January and February, raising gypsum prices 17.7 percent above the most recent low in February of 2011.
via Producer Prices in March – Gypsum Continues to Rise « Eye on Housing.
- ‘Not good timing’: Drywall prices rising – Finance and Commerce (gypsumfiles.com)
- Producer Prices in January – Watch Gypsum (woodonfire.wordpress.com)
Plaster could be grown in the lab | Chem.Info
Plaster grown in the lab
10 April 2012, by Adele Rackley
New research could be the first step towards a much cheaper and more efficient way to make plaster.
Scientists have reproduced the early stages of gypsum crystals in their laboratory, a process which could lead to a cheap way to manufacture the plaster of Paris that’s used by builders, artists and medical practitioners.
Chances are it’s on the walls and ceiling of the room you’re in now – 100 million tons of plaster of Paris, are manufactured every year from the naturally occurring mineral gypsum. As well as in the building industry, it’s widely used by artists and in medicine.
Plaster is made by first quarrying the gypsum, then driving out its water content to leave a powder made up of mineral called bassanite. It’s an energy-hungry process with a large carbon footprint.
But now researchers have documented the first steps that could lead to turning this process around.
Scientists from the University of Leeds and the CSIC-University of Granada in Spain, experimented with supersaturated gypsum solutions to try to figure out how gypsum crystals form – something that is not well understood. To their surprise they found that the first phase to form in the solution were bassanite nanoparticles – but under those chemical conditions bassanite should not have formed at all.
By taking a series of high resolution images they watched these tiny particles growing into rods and joining up into strings that eventually transform into gypsum crystals.
And this all happened at room temperature, so in principle this could become a low-energy way of producing the raw material for plaster of Paris.
via Plaster could be grown lab. | Chem.Info.
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Gypsum Board: Are Our Walls Leaching Toxins? | GreenSpec
Domestic manufacturers are quick to point out that gypsum board manufactured in the U.S. has not been linked to indoor air quality problems, but potential leaching of heavy metals and biocides included for mold resistance are among the issues that need to be addressed more thoroughly by the gypsum board industry.
via Gypsum Board: Are Our Walls Leaching Toxins? | GreenSpec.
Hungarian mud remedy also captured carbon
‘A few people had looked at the possibility of using red mud for carbon capture in the past, but it was a real surprise that adding gypsum turned out to have this effect,’ says Dr Phil Renforth, a geochemist at the University of Oxford and the paper’s lead author. ‘Looking at the geochemistry of the deposits it left behind showed a direct relationship between how much gypsum was added and how much carbon was captured.’
Cumberlink.com: Personal motivation plays key role in science fair
For Nina First, the science fair meant more than just another school project. It was an investigation into the claims made by a drywall company.
The 13-year-old lives on Green Street in Harrisburg, which meant her house was one of the ones inundated by flood waters during Tropical Storm Lee in September. In the process of rebuilding the basement, there was a question about the best drywall to use.
Now that water was clearly an issue, water-resistance became an important factor in choosing, and by October, Nina knew what she wanted to test.“My mother was looking at drywall, and there was a fiberglass option that said it was moisture-resistant,” Nina said. “I wanted to see if that was true.”
So the student at The Silver Academy in Harrisburg decided to focus her science fair project on testing three types of drywall, including her main drywall panel – the Gold Bond e2XP Interior Extreme Gypsum panel from The National Gypsum Company.
After soaking the Gold Bond, as well as green and yellow drywall panels, and then waiting 40 hours to put weights on them, Nina found that the advertised qualities were, in fact, true.“A couple of the green boards broke, almost all of the yellow boards broke, but none of the Gold Bond did,” Nina said.
via Cumberlink.com: Personal motivation plays key role in science fair.
John Friedman: Climate Change: Good for Business?
From an article about business innovation and climate change:
Synthetic gypsum has been used to make wallboard in the United States for more than 20 years. Electric power plants that burn coal are required to have scrubbers that trap emissions. The result is a very pure synthetic gypsum that is being used to create wallboard. Since 2000, enough gypsum to finish the interior of more than 7 million American homes has come from this waste product.The future belongs to the innovators and the clever and the bold.
‘Not good timing’: Drywall prices rising – Finance and Commerce
Federal data released Thursday show that prices are climbing for a variety of construction materials including drywall products, which are heavily used in homebuilding.Last fall, suppliers of gypsum products said they intended to raise prices 35 percent on Jan. 1, and some local builders say they have seen drywall prices increase between 20 percent and 30 percent in 2012. Manufacturers said the poor economy necessitated price increases in gypsum. But local builders say the price hikes are problematic for a residential construction industry still struggling to regain its footing.
via ‘Not good timing’: Drywall prices rising – Finance & Commerce.
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Gypsum Association Commissions Extensive Life Cycle Assessment Study – Times Union
In support of the study, primary life cycle inventory (LCI) data were collected for three major gate-to-gate processes in the production of gypsum wallboard (natural or crude gypsum ore extraction, gypsum paper manufacture, and gypsum wallboard production) for the reference year 2010. The manufacturing plant study sample included all Gypsum Association member companies and represented about 30% of all gypsum wallboard produced in the USA. To ensure representativeness, the manufacturing plant study also considered the scale of operations including a mix of small, medium and large facilities, their geographical location in each US census region and their source of gypsum (adjacent quarry, mine, or imported gypsum ore) as well as their use of flue gas desulphurization (FGD) gypsum.
Read more: http://www.timesunion.com/business/press-releases/article/Gypsum-Association-Commissions-Athena-Institute-3335326.php#ixzz1maHsKygW
CDC Finds No Link Between Deaths, Chinese Drywall – ABC News
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it has found no link between tainted Chinese drywall and the deaths of 11 people living in homes with the defective drywall in Louisiana, Florida and Virginia.
The CDC said in a report Monday that the people died without exception due to “preexisting chronic health conditions unrelated to imported drywall exposure.”
CDC Finds No Link Between Deaths, Chinese Drywall – ABC News.
