HIGHLIGHTS:
• Surat, Gujarat, is the first Indian city to have a steel slag-based road
• CRRI, CSIR, AM/NS and NITI Aayog collaborated to build this road in Hazira, a Surat suburb
• The cost of constructing this steel road is 30% less than that of constructing roads with natural materials
Surat, Gujarat, is the first Indian city to have a steel slag-based road (industrial waste). The Central Road Research Institute (CRRI), the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), the NITI Aayog, the Union Steel Ministry, and ArcelorMittal-Nippon Steel (AM/NS) collaborated to build this road in Hazira, a Surat suburb.
About the project
This road’s construction began a year ago. Steel slag was created by transforming heaps of steel scrap. There are six lanes on this road, with three lanes on each side. This road is used by heavy-duty vehicles from global companies based in Surat’s industrial estate. The cost of constructing this steel road is 30% less than that of constructing roads with natural materials. In addition, the thickness of this road is 30% lesser than that of typical roads. Because steel slag was utilized to make this road, it has a substantially longer lifespan. This project was carried out as part of the Waste to Wealth and Clean India Campaign.
The construction of this road
The slag that was utilized to construct this road was produced in the form of molten flux material from a steel furnace that was burning at 1500 to 1600 degrees Celsius. The molten material was then poured into slag pits to cool before being treated further to create the stable steel slag aggregates that were used in the road construction. Around 1 lakh tonnes of processed steel slag were needed to build the road.
Load test of this road
Pressure cells, strain gauges, thermocouples, and displacement gauges were used to measure load-induced deformation on the steel slag road. The CSIR CRRI will continue to monitor this road for another year. On a daily basis, this road sees over 30 heavy-loaded trucks.
