Gujarat gets India’s first steel road
What is the news :
- The Diamond City of India, Surat, has become the first in India to get a road that is made out of steel waste.
- Built by ArcelorMittal Nippon Steel India with CSIR India (Council of Scientific and Industrial Research) & CRRI (Central Road Research Institute) along with the government think tank NITI Aayog, the steel slag road is a stellar example of sustainable development.
About the steel slag use in making road :
- In one of the finest examples of sustainable development, Gujarat’s Surat has got a road that is made up of steel waste.
- The steel slag road has been built by ArcelorMittal Nippon Steel India with CSIR India (Council of Scientific and Industrial Research) and the Central Road Research Institute (CRRI) and government think tank NitiAayog.
- Steel slag,a by-product of steel making, is produced during the separation of the molten steel from impurities in steel-making furnaces. The slag occurs as a molten liquid melt and is a complex solution of silicates and oxides that solidifies upon cooling.
- There are many grades of steel that can be produced, and the properties of the steel slag can change significantly with each grade.Grades of steel can be classified as high, medium, and low, depending on the carbon content of the steel. High-grade steels have high carbon content. To reduce the amount of carbon in the steel, greater oxygen levels are required in the steel-making process. This also requires the addition of increased levels of lime and dolime (flux) for the removal of impurities from the steel and increased slag formation.
- There are several different types of steel slag produced during the steel-making process.These different types are referred to as furnace or tap slag, raker slag, synthetic or ladle slags, and pit or cleanout slag.
- The steel slag produced during the primary stage of steel productionis referred to as furnace slag or tap slag. This is the major source of steel slag aggregate. After being tapped from the furnace, the molten steel is transferred in a ladle for further refining to remove additional impurities still contained within the steel. This operation is called ladle refining because it is completed within the transfer ladle.
- During ladle refining, additional steel slags are generatedby again adding fluxes to the ladle to melt. These slags are combined with any carryover of furnace slag and assist in absorbing deoxidation products (inclusions), heat insulation, and protection of ladle refractories. The steel slags produced at this stage of steel making are generally referred to as raker and ladle slags.
Gujarat’s steel road:
- The unique road has come up in thecity of Surat in Gujarat at the Hazira Industrial Area.
- The road has been built with 1000% processed steel slag.Steel slag is a major concern for steel industries as it is considered a waste material. The disposal of metallurgical and metal-processing waste in landfills is particularly hazardous for the environment. Processed steel slag aggregate exhibits great potential as a replacement for natural construction material.
- The experimented project is a 1 KM long road and has six lanes.
- Thethickness of the road has also been reduced by 30%
- So far the road has proven to be a strong one. More than 1,000 trucks, 18 to 30 every day are passing with tons of weight on the steel road.
Other Utilization of steel slag:
- Rail Ballast:Steel slag is hard, dense and resistant to both attrition and abrasion making it suitable for use as a railway ballast aggregate.
- Road & pavement material:Â SMS Slag has already been successfully used as road making aggregate in SAIL. Slag mixed with fly ash has been success- fully tried and being used for brick manufacture, Streets, airport runways etc.
- Crushed Steel slag of size approx. 300 mesh sizes can be used for soil conditioning. Tea and coffee plantations are potential customers.
- Steel slag contains oxide of aluminium and iron combined with a calcium base which reacts to neutralize the PH of the waste water.
- Steel slags have been successfully used for flooring tiles because of their good abrasive materials properties.
Way forward:
- Every year millions of tonnes of steel waste are produced bydifferent plants around the country go to landfills. Now, this unique experiment will not only utilize an unused resource but will also make more durable roads.
- However, the integration of these will be a challenging taskas the utilization architecture is highly complex and technologies can only be auxiliary means to achieve environment justice.
- But with increasing adoption of the technology, there will be more debates and conversations on problemsas well as their potential solutions. In the long-run all this would help to achieve sustainable development.
About Gujrat :
- Governor – Acharya dev vrat
- Chief minister- Bhupendrbhai Patel
- Capital- Gandhinagar
- National Parks –
- Blackbuck National Park, Velavadar
- Gir National Park
- Marine National Park, Gulf of Kutch
- Vansda National Park
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