India is using steel slag, the waste generated during steel production, to build stronger and more durable roads along the India-China border in Arunachal Pradesh, Science and Technology Minister Jitendra Singh said on Monday.
The technology to use steel slag for road construction was developed by CSIR-Central Road Research Institute (CRRI) which is set to address the problem of slag generated by steel plants.
Singh, who visited the CSIR-CRRI here, said that the steel slag roads not only cost about 30 per cent cheaper than conventional paving but were also more durable and resistant to vagaries of weather.
The Union minister said that in June last year, Surat in Gujarat became the first city in the country to get a processed steel slag road built as part of a joint-venture project by the CSIR-CRRI, Union Ministry of Steel, NITI Aayog, and Arcelor-Mittal Nippon Steel at Hazira.
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Slag is made up of impurities melted out of the ore during the steel-making process in most of the steel plants. The stretch of six-lane road experimentally paved with slag has shown to resist beating from weather as well as from thousands of heavy trucks, even though the surface is 30 per cent shallower than that of roads paved with natural aggregates.
The Border Roads Organisation (BRO) also used steel slag to construct a long-lasting heavy-duty road at Arunachal Pradesh along the India-China border area, he said. The steel slag was supplied by Tata Steel free-of-cost and transported from Jamshedpur to Arunachal Pradesh by Indian Railways, Singh said, adding that the National Highways Authority of India has successfully tested the steel slag road technology on the Mumbai-Goa National Highway-66.
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India is the world's second largest steel producer, an official statement said, adding that around 200 kg of slag is generated per tonne of steel production. Steel slag generation in the country is about 19 million tons per annum and expected to reach 60 million tons by 2030.
“The idea is to increase the scale of road construction. Once you reach out to the market, you have a linkage with the industry. The industry is expected to sell it across, and to do so, they have to propagate themselves,” Singh said.
