STEEL SLAG ROAD TECHNOLOGY

Context: Union Minister of State for Steel said that the Steel Slag Road technology of CSIR-CRRI is playing an important role in realising the Prime Minister mission of ‘Waste to Wealth’.

Key Points

• India is the second largest steel producing country in the world and about 19 million tonnes of steel slag is generated in the country as a solid waste, which will increase to 60 million tonnes by the year 2030. (About 200 kg of steel slag is generated in one tonne of steel production).
• The 1st road made with steel slag road interpretation technology in Surat, Gujarat, has become famous for its technological excellence at national and national level.
• Border Roads Organization has also constructed a steel slag road in Arunachal Pradesh along with CRRI and Tata Steel on India-China border, having a much longer life than conventional road.
• Similarly, the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has also successfully used this technology in road construction on National Highway-66 (Mumbai-Goa) in collaboration with JSW Steel, under the technical guidance of CRRI.

Steel Slag Road Technology

• The technology has been developed by the Central Road Research Institute under a research project in collaboration with the Ministry of Steel, Government of India and four major steel manufacturing companies of the country, viz., ArcelorMittal Nippon Steel, JSW Steel, Tata Steel and Rashtriya Ispat Nigam.
• This technology facilitates the large-scale utilization of waste steel slag of steel plants and has proved very useful in effective disposal of about 19 million tonnes of steel slag generated in the country.
• The slag is generated from a steel furnace burning at around 1,500-1,600 degree centigrade in the form of molten flux material as an impurity.
• The molten material is poured into the slag pits for cooling as per the customised procedure and further processed to develop stable steel slag aggregates, with “better material properties in place of the natural aggregate commonly used in road constructions.
• This technique has been successfully tested in road construction in four major states of the country including Gujarat, Jharkhand, Maharashtra and Arunachal Pradesh.