India: Uttar Pradesh boy develops transparent concrete for buildings

Kanpur: A boy in Uttar Pradesh has developed ‘transparent concrete’ with steel, iron and plastic fibre scraps which will allow the sun rays to filter in.

The invention was made by Ramansh Bajpai, a student of the M. Tech course in Civil Engineering at the Harcourt Butler Technical University (HBTU) in Kanpur.

Walls made with this concrete will allow 30 per cent of sun rays through it and light up rooms.

The walls, however, will allow only sunlight and not the heat and this will lead to a 30 per cent reduction in electricity consumption.

Bajpai said the walls made with this concrete will allow sun rays but will not allow air and water, which means that buildings made with this material will not have the risk of dampness or leaking.

Dipesh Kumar Singh, under whose guidance Bajpai developed the concrete, said: “This concrete is 23 per cent stronger than the ordinary concrete. It costs only 33 per cent of the ordinary concrete and can be used with Plaster of Paris.”

For instance, a wall made of transparent concrete will cost Rs1,924 while one with the same measurement, made by bricks and concrete will cost Rs5,800.

“We have used 40 per cent ground granulated blast furnace slag, commonly known as GGBS. This is obtained by quenching molten iron slag (a by-product of iron and steelmaking) from a blast furnace in water or steam, to produce a glassy, granular product that is then dried and ground into a fine powder,” Singh added.

GGBS has been widely used in Europe, and increasingly in the US and in Asia, particularly in Japan and Singapore, for its superiority in concrete durability, extending the lifespan of buildings from 50 years to a hundred years.

The newly developed transparent concrete is free from carbon dioxide and is 15 per cent lighter.