Gypsum industry news

UK: Adaptavate has inaugurated its first pilot line to produce Breathaboard bio-based alternative wallboard. Breathaboard performs in the same way as ordinary gypsum wallboard, but sequesters and avoids additional CO₂ emissions, reducing the board’s total carbon footprint by 4kg/m². Adaptavate's production process uses fibrous and cellulosic by-products from agricultural crops, combined with minerals. It has a minimal water footprint and does not require natural gas.

Chief technical officer Jeff Ive said "The commissioning of our pilot line is the culmination of a year's hard work. We knew the solution had to be scalable for significant impact. With full-size boards produced on a continuously extruded process, we’re turning our vision into reality. This pilot line is a game changer for us, our industry, and the planet, laying the foundation for global replication of our core innovation."

One can tell that gypsum wallboard is a popular product because companies keep trying to devise alternatives to it. A recent one is Breathaboard. The company making it, Adaptavate, announced in August 2023 that it had generated around Euro2.3m in its latest investment round. It is building a pilot production line in Bristol in the UK and attempting to licence its Breathaboard product, amongst other plans. Its take on wallboard is being marketed as a sustainable substitute that is made from crop waste, that sequesters CO₂ and that then can be composted at the end of its life. It is also promoting the product’s breathability and moisture buffering capabilities, hence the name.

Another new contender hoping to steal some of the gypsum wallboard market is Xeriant’s Nexaboard product. This one uses plastic waste as its alternative to gypsum. Florida-based Xeriant said in July 2023 that it had started to buy equipment and raw materials, was running pilot production and was testing its first samples. It too is working on getting its product used in pilot construction projects.

Both of these examples, and others over the years, have taken a pop at wallboard’s sustainability credentials. Adaptavate is rather quieter about what happens to all of that sequestered CO₂ when its product is composted and Xeriant does not mention the environmental impact of making the plastic it uses in the first place. Yet, it is a valid question to ask how sustainable is gypsum wallboard? This column has covered issues with the supply of raw gypsum from either natural, synthetic or recycled sources previously, so we will stick to the general picture here.

The late-lamented consultant Bob Bruce pulled together data from various studies for the Global Gypsum Conference in 2019 to estimate the CO₂ emissions from wallboard production. He estimated that the global average of CO₂ production by wallboard was around 2.4kg/m², equating to 24Mt/yr of CO₂ for the global wallboard industry. For reference, it is estimated by the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research - Oslo (CICERO) that the process emissions from clinker production alone released around 1.6Gt/yr of CO₂ in 2022. When compared by mass (as opposed to area) to other building materials, wallboard has a lower carbon intensity than many products such as glass, cement (made from clinker), plastics, steel and plywood. Timber, concrete and brick are all better than wallboard though. However, as Bruce pointed out, a lot more concrete is manufactured than wallboard. Bruce came up with a handful of suggestions for how wallboard production could reduce its CO₂ emissions such as the reduction of slurry water, local delivery, co-generation, increasing drying efficiency and so on.

The two big sustainability trends from the sector over the last year have been the drive to support higher recycling rates of gypsum and a move towards ‘greener’ sources of energy. This can be seen in the growing use of electrical energy from renewable sources such as the production of net zero CO₂ gypsum wallboard at Saint-Gobain’s Fredrikstad plant in Norway from April 2023. The group’s Montreal plant looks set to follow in 2024 following an upgrade, potentially making it the first net zero wallboard plant in North America. Chiyoda-Ute in Japan has also started using renewably-sourced electricity at its plants in Japan, but it is uncertain what other energy sources these sites are using. China-based BNBM also claimed in its half-year results that it had built four “nearly zero emission” gypsum board production lines in the reporting period.

Wallboard's market position in North America, Europe and elsewhere seems secure. However, it is in dynamic tension as it is both a potential replacement for more carbon intensive building materials and it could also be susceptible to new emerging products that can improve on its own emissions. The manufacturers of Breathaboard and Nexaboard are clearly hoping for the latter. Yet, as is often pointed out, giving more market share to wallboard from other common building materials could reduce CO₂ emissions from construction massively. The diversification of traditional heavy building materials companies such as Holcim into light building materials in recent years suggests that some businesses are seriously preparing for this possibility. No doubt, if global wallboard usage does start to rise significantly, the pressure will grow to make wallboard more sustainable and to devise even more alternative board products.

UK: Adaptavate has raised around Euro2.3m in its latest investment round. This investment round has been led by Counteract, with Low Carbon Innovation Fund 2 (LCIF2), Semin and Perivoli Innovations. It follows Adaptavate’s previous seed funding round, announced in March 2022, and subsequent support received to industrialise the development of carbon negative construction materials including developing industrial processes to make low-carbon and carbon absorbing plaster and wallboard.

The company is currently building a development centre, including laboratories and a pilot production, line in Bristol and conducting research to complete testing and licencing programmes for its Breathaboard product. Breathaboard is a gypsum-free wallboard manufactured from compostable crop waste. Adaptavate intends to start use Breathaboard produced on the new line in pilot construction projects by the end of 2023. The new funding will also be used to develop other sustainable building products. The company is additionally looking to licence its technology to the large building products manufacturers and has already started conversations with potential partners.

Tom Robinson, the chief executive officer and founder of Adaptavate, said “This funding round is a pivotal point in the acceleration of Adaptavate and our aim to be the world leader in this space. With the support of like-minded funding partners, we are leading the carbon revolution of building materials as a form of carbon capture and utilisation. What I am most pleased about is that this funding round was oversubscribed, which shows the appetite for near to market, industrially scalable carbon absorbing technologies, even at an economically challenging time.”

UK: Adaptavate and the University of Bath have produced alternative gypsum-free wallboard from compostable crop waste. The partners have received funding from the National Biofilms Innovation Centre (NBIC) for a six-month pilot project of production of their prototype wallboard, called Breathaboard. It uses the natural properties of bacteria to form a board with similar properties to gypsum wallboard. The producers claim that it is both lighter and more insulative than gypsum wallboard. They hope to scale up production and market Breathaboard as an environmentally friendly alternative to gypsum wallboard, as it does not require gypsum extraction or flue gas desulphurisation (FGD) at coal-fired power plants.

Project leader Susanne Gebhard said “This is an exciting project that will see whether we can exploit the natural biofilm-forming abilities of bacteria to function as a kind of glue that will help improve the properties of biodegradable construction materials.”