Bacterial Concrete as a Sustainable Building Material?

Elżbieta Stanaszek-Tomal
Additional contact information
Elżbieta Stanaszek-Tomal: Chair of Building Materials Engineering, Faculty of Civil Engineering, PK Cracow University of Technology, 31-155 Kraków, Poland

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 2, 1-13

Abstract: The right selection of building materials plays an important role when designing a building to fall within the definition of sustainable development. One of the most commonly used construction materials is concrete. Its production causes a high energy burden on the environment. Concrete is susceptible to external factors. As a result, cracks occur in the material. Achieving its durability along with the assumptions of sustainable construction means there is a need to use an environmentally friendly and effective technique of alternative crack removal in the damaged material. Bacterial self-healing concrete reduces costs in terms of detection of damage and maintenance of concrete structures, thus ensuring a safe lifetime of the structure. Bacterial concrete can improve its durability. However, it is not currently used on an industrial scale. The high cost of the substrates used means that they are not used on an industrial scale. Many research units try to reduce production costs through various methods; however, bacterial concrete can be an effective response to sustainability.

Keywords: sustainable; self-healing; concrete; bacteria (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/2/696/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/2/696/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:2:p:696-:d:310157

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().