India for the first time will start using steel slag for construction of roads, a government ministry said on Tuesday, November 29.
“India has entered into an era of road construction using steel slag aggregates instead of concrete,” minister Jitender Singh said.
Such construction will first be undertaken in “strategic areas” along India’s border regions with other countries, he said.
The initiative has been launched jointly by the government’s Border Roads Organization (BRO), Tata Steel, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research and the Central Road Research Institute using steel slag sourced from the blast furnaces of Tata Steel’s Jamshedpur steel mill.
The ministry of steel has successfully completed studies on the viability of utilizing an estimated 19.5 million mt of steel slag produced by the steel mills of Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited (RINL), JSW Steel Limited and ArcelorMittal Nippon Steel Limited, and found to be suitable for construction of roads, replacing concrete.