Bioconcrete can repair its own cracks with bacteria

The Bioconcrete is a new concrete that can repair its own cracks with bacteria.

Images credit CNN

The bioconcrete is produced like the regular concrete but contains an extra ingredient, the ‘healing agent.’

The new ingredient only becoming active if the concrete cracks and water gets in.

Professor Henk Jonkers, of Delft University of Technology, in the Netherlands, explains:

“If you have cracks, water comes through — in your basements, in a parking garage. Secondly, if this water gets to the steel reinforcements — in concrete we have all these steel rebars — if they corrode, the structure collapses.

You need bacteria that can survive the harsh environment of concrete. It’s a rock-like, stone-like material, very dry.

It is combining nature with construction materials,” he says. “Nature is supplying us a lot of functionality for free — in this case, limestone-producing bacteria.”