The Georgia Department of Transport (GDOT) in the US has done the first field trial of Eden Energy’s EdenCrete concrete admixture this week.
The trial was undertaken on the US Interstate Highway I-20 near the border between Georgia and South Carolina.
Perth-based Eden Energy has developed EdenCrete, a carbon nanotube enriched liquid additive which increases the flexural and tensile strength of concrete thereby improving resistance to failure resulting from bending and stressing.
The additive claims to offer strength advantages without compromise to compressive strength, permeability or corrosion resistance.
The trial in Georgia involved laying 10 cubic metres of concrete enriched with EdenCrete to replace a badly worn section of the right hand lane of I-20. The field trial was undertaken as part of a planned maintenance programme on I-20.
Two similar sized adjoining sections of the same lane in I-20 will be replaced by GDOT in the same manner using the same concrete mix but with no added EdenCrete, to give a basis for the longer term assessment of the comparative performance of EdenCrete enriched concrete compared with the same concrete mixture that contains no EdenCrete.
These results will be considered by GDOT alongside the results of the various laboratory tests of EdenCrete that GDOT is about to undertake.
One of the primary target markets of the carbon-strengthened concrete additive is improving the performance of concrete used in the construction and maintenance of concrete roads, bridges and other infrastructure.