STATE TIMES NEWS
NEW DELHI: Union Minister, Dr Jitendra Singh on Monday announced that India has developed the world’s latest “Steel Road” technology.
programme at Central Road Research Institute (CRRI), New Delhi, on Monday.
He informed that CSIR-Central Road Research Institute (CRRI), New Delhi, which was founded in 1952, has pioneered the development of a revolutionary Steel slag road technology which facilitates the large-scale utilization of waste steel slag from Steel Plants in road construction.
Dr Jitendra said steel slag technology in paving the roads is in tune with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Waste to Wealth” Mantra.
“This innovative technological initiative also addresses the problem of environmental degradation caused by waste steel slag and unsustainable mining and quarrying of natural aggregates. CRRI has developed several key technologies for sustainable utilization of waste materials in road construction”, he said.
The stretch of six-lane road experimentally paved with slag from AM/NS plant has been shown to resist beating from weather as well as from thousands of heavy trucks, even though the surface is 30% shallower than that of roads paved with natural aggregates.
The trial, guided by the CSIR-CRRI, suggests that roads built with the abundant waste material mixed with bitumen could be 30% cheaper than conventional paving, and reduce the unsustainable mining of sand and gravel.
Dr Jitendra Singh, who visited the Central Road Research Institute here today, said that the steel slag road not only cost about 30% cheaper than conventional bitumen but they are also more durable and resistant to weather vagaries.
“Steel slag roads have been found to last ten years as compared to three to four years for bitumen roads, thus bringing down sharply the maintenance costs. In Surat, the steel slag road top has been found to weather the erosive saline marine environment while in the cold, snowy and torrential rain prone toughest Himalayan terrain, the steel slag roads have been found to last longer” he said.
Nearly 50,000 kms of National Highways have been added in the last nine years, while the pace of construction more than doubled from 12 to 29 km/day since 2014. In May this year, India achieved a milestone by laying 112.5 lane kilometres of bituminous concrete road within a timeframe of 100 hours.
During the visit, Dr Jitendra Singh also launched the CSIR ‘One Week One Lab’ programme. He also interacted with students being conducted on a guided tour of CRRI as part of the ‘One Week One Lab’ campaign.