UAE: Architects use salt to create cement

Science has the beauty to bring innovations that one has not imagined so far and in an interesting development, two UAE-based architects are looking at possibilities to build structures using cement made by salt. 

Wael Al Awar and Kenichi Teramoto, main architects at waiwai, took guidance from universities in the UAE and Japan to create cement using brine generated by the UAE's desalination plants. 

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The architects got insipred by country's mineral-rich sabkha, salt flats that exist in wetlands. 

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"It a huge area ... that's often overlooked," Al Awar said, reported CNN. 

Centuries ago, Sabhka was used, where blocks were hewn from salt flats and used to establish Siwa, a medieval town in Egypt near the Libyan border. 

However, Wael and Kenichi used waste brine, which contains most of its minerals. 

Al Awar said their magnesium-based cement can be "equivalent of Portland cement", which uses calcium carbonate as a raw material and is the most commonly used cement in manufacturing concrete. 

Highlighting its limitations, Al Awar said that since this cement is made from salt, it can corrode steel reinforcement.