Interview with Dr Yury Andrés VILLAGRAN ZACCARDI

Dr Yury Andrés VILLAGRAN ZACCARDI is currently a researcher at VITO, an independent Flemish research organisation in the area of cleantech and sustainable development. Dr Villagran has been member of several RILEM Technical Committees as well as secretary of LatRILEM between 2014 and 2022. Dr Villagran has recently co-authored the paper Overview of cement and concrete production in Latin America and the Caribbean with a focus on the goals of reaching carbon neutrality, published in RILEM Technical Letters (RTL). This interview offers some “behind the scenes” details of this paper.

9 September 2022

Dr Daniela Ciancio (RIM): Good morning, Yury! First of all, your career in RILEM! After a bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering at the National University of Technology, Argentina, a master at the Torroja Institute in Madrid, and a PhD back at the National University of La Plata, Argentina, you became a RILEM member in 2012. How did everything start?

Dr Yury Villagrán-Zaccardi (Yury): I met RILEM in 2007 when I was at the Eduardo Torroja Institute in Madrid, studying my master. I was back in Madrid in 2011 for a PhD research visit and there was a TC meeting there at the time, on Supplementary Cementitious Materials (SCM) (Editor’s note: Kick-off meeting of 238-SCM : Hydration and microstructure of concrete with supplementary cementitious materials). I remember that Carmen Andrade invited me to participate in it. The meeting was chaired by Nele De Belie. I put a lot of effort during the coffee breaks to make myself known (laughs). After that, we continued to exchange emails and then we met again in 2012 in Mexico during a Materials Science conference and a PhD course of RILEM on SCM (Editor’s note: Selected subjects on cement and concrete with Smart Additives and Supplementary Cementitious Materials). In that occasion, I received a free RILEM membership as participant in the course. That same year I also attended another RILEM PhD course in Nanjing, China, on multiscale modelling (Editor’s note: Multi-Scale Modelling of Concrete Course - MMC2). I remember that I asked for a fee reduction as without it I couldn’t have afforded the trip from Argentina to China; the organisers kindly let me pay a reduced fee. I started my membership in RILEM as a PhD student. Then I started my academic career at LEMIT, in La Plata, Argentina, and I became a senior member.

RIM: Did you join any Technical Committee then?

Yury: I joined TC 238-SCM : Hydration and microstructure of concrete with supplementary cementitious materials, but partly because most of the meetings were in Europe (Editor’s note: in person! This was pre-covid time), I couldn’t take part in many activities. Nevertheless, I learned a lot about that topic. It was then that I decided that I wanted to become more involved in RILEM.

RIM: Do you remember when you became LatRILEM secretary?

Yury: That was in 2014, as a consequence of the fact that I took part in some RILEM activities in Argentina: at that time, there was a yearly course on durability of concrete that was held in Argentina in Spanish. It was not an official RILEM course, but it was organised by prominent RILEM members like Esperanza Menendez-Mendez and Carmen Andrade. I took part in this course in 2010, 2011, 2012, etc… giving lectures.

RIM: You have been a very active RILEM officer as LatRILEM secretary from 2014 till 2022. During your service there were three International agreements signed: between RILEM and the ‘Asociación Latinoamericana de Control de Calidad, Patología y Recuperación de la Construcción’ ALCONPAT, the ‘Asociación Argentina de Tecnología del Hormigón’ AATH, and you are behind another very effective partnership between RILEM and the Inter-American Cement Federation FICEM.  More recently, you co-authored the paper “Overview of cement and concrete production in Latin America and the Caribbean with a focus on the goals of reaching carbon neutrality“ in RILEM Technical Letters (RTL). Can you please tell us more about this paper?

Yury: Well… the basis of this paper started with the RILEM partnership with FICEM. I thought it was a nice opportunity to make the research and activities in Latin America better known to all RILEM members. After a consultation with the LatRILEM Presidium about the most appropriate topic, the theme of low-carbon cement was the elected one. Well… it is a hot topic world-wide, and also in Latin America. It was interesting because there is a lot of expertise in Latin America on low-carbon cements. Latin America is one of the regions having the most sustainable cements, because the clinker factor in this region is one of the lowest in the world, even better than in Europe. This is due in part to the availability of natural resources, like natural pozzolan materials, that are very suitable for cement production; but it is also due to the growing awareness of the global warming issue. So, it was a really nice opportunity to constitute a sort of committee; we had many meetings to discuss the content of the paper and exchange information. It was a very educational experience for all of us, about the variable realities in which we work! It was funny to realise that while we are geographically close in Latin America, it was through RILEM that we got closer. I already knew the co-authors of the paper (Editor’s note: Ricardo Pareja, Lina Rojas, Edgardo Fabián Irassar, Andrés Torres-Acosta, Jorge Tobón, Vanderley M. John). With the agreement of the LatRILEM Presidium we invited all of them and they were all very happy to contribute.

RIM: There is a very strong contribution from FICEM in this paper in the form of 2 co-authors: Dr Lina Rojas, Technical Director of FICEM, and Ricardo Pareja, Low-carbon Innovation Leader of FICEM. How was working with them and how was the coordination of the paper in general?

Yury: It was a pleasure to work with them! We complemented very well, because FICEM is a federation of industrial partners and cement producers in the Ibero-American region and as such they have access to lots of data. This data is not always available to researchers. On the other side, we contributed with our background on more technical aspects, such as the science behind the reactivity of SCM. The exchange was very fruitful on both sides. To be honest, at the beginning Lina and I were discussing about the partnership between RILEM and FICEM, because of the different profiles of both organizations. We were not sure how it was going to work, but we are all very happy with the result of this paper and the exchange we had through this initiative.

RIM: What is the most important message of the paper?

Yury: For the researchers reading this paper, the main message is the full picture it offers. As a researcher, you usually work on a specific SCM or property, and you might miss the whole vision of reducing the carbon footprint of the cement and concrete industry. And this is not only about cement! Nowadays, there are many ways we can use to reduce the carbon footprint of concrete by designing mixes that are more efficient in terms of carbon emission. For the readers of this paper from the industry there is also a message about the new technologies that have been developed but that still need to be implemented in the cement production sector. I think Latin America is in good shape but there is a huge challenge on the horizon. There is a path toward 2030 to reduce carbon footprint, but from then onwards there is a lack of technology to further reduce the carbon footprint and reach carbon neutral cement and concrete production by 2050.

RIM: Do you think it will be easy to overcome the inertia of the industry to change the production chain of cement?

Yury: I think that, in recent years, there has been a significant change in the level of awareness of the industry. They embrace the need of being more sustainable, not only for the image of the industry itself but because of the consequences of not doing it. There are many initiatives from the cement industry to produce carbon efficient materials. This is why researchers should act now and take this opportunity to push forward. On this matter, another message in the paper is that the solutions we need to implement need to be adapted to the geographic region. Latin America has specific cultures and practices for the construction industry that are not so sustainable, and others that are very sustainable and that can serve as an example for other regions. Only very few technologies can be applied world-wide and others need to be adapted to each region.

RIM: Can we promise the readers of this interview that there will be soon a translation in Spanish of this paper?

Yury: I think it is doable and we can promise this.

RIM: And we can also anticipate that there will soon be a webinar with you and Ricardo Pareja as speakers to present the details of this paper.

Yury: Yes, absolutely! To conclude I want to add something: I come from Argentina where I lived and worked but now I live and work in Europe. There are differences not only in practices but, of course, in culture. I had the opportunity to work in academia, I was a researcher at LEMIT in Argentina, then I was a researcher at Ghent University, in Belgium, and now I am working at VITO which is a research institute but with a different profile, more focused on strategic research and on the opportunities on how to implement these technologies at real scale. That is something that sometimes is missed in academia. We produce the paper and there it is; but there is still a lot of work to bring those ideas into application. We, as researchers, have to translate this paper to the industry and help them to implement these technologies. So, I hope that in the coming years I can play a role in this connection between research and implementation. The paper in RTL is a humble contribution to this matter, but it establishes a communication channel between academia and industry.