Nine innovative impregnation products especially designed to preserve the historic concrete have beendeveloped. The synthesis of these new products has been guided with support of modelling tools. A new family of impregnation treatments which are able of sealing micro/nano-cracks by producing C-S-H gel, responsible for the mechanical properties of cement paste, have been developed. The alkoxysilane-based formula produces C-S-H gel by the polymerization of silanol groups with Ca+2 ions existing in the cement pore water. A product containing Ca oxalate was developed to improve compatibility with carbonatic materials.
A second step was to integrate innovative performances to the C-S-H technology, producing multifunctional treatments. Firstly, corrosion inhibitors responsive to external stimili (pH & Cl-) were integrated. Secondly, multifunctional products with superhydrophobic properties have been obtained. An atmospheric plasma device was also developed as an alternative. InnovaConcrete has also explored the advantages to use cementitious coatings reinforced with halloysite nanotubes. Finally, InnovaConcrete has investigated a biotechnology based approach to produce enzyme-assisted self-healing of damage concrete by exploiting the naturally residing bacteria on historic concrete.
The laboratory validation of the InnovaConcrete technologies has been performed in more than 1000 concrete and mortar samples representative of common building pathologies and material properties (including mock-ups from case studies). Complementary to this experimental study, a powerful multi-scale model simulating concrete degradation has been developed. The validation experiments were used for the fine optimization of the products.
In situ validation of the InnovaConcrete technologies has been performed on 8 case studies, being one of them completely restored. These case studies have been selected to cover a wide range of societal/economic impacts as well as to represent different environmental conditions and conservation problems.
Regarding to second target of InnovaConcrete, to promote awareness about concrete heritage. The first step consisted of the selection of the significant concrete-based monuments in Europe. A final selection of 100 monuments was made according to the adopted criteria. The complete information is available in an open platform (
https://100of20.innovaconcrete.eu/(se abrirá en una nueva ventana)).
In addition, the first benchmark guidance document for the conservation of concrete heritage has been implemented. This document provides guidance for the conservation of concrete heritage with respect to its cultural, historical aesthetics and technological significance. Complementarily, a tool for touristic and commercial potential analyses of concrete cultural heritage has been developed integrated in a web-based decision making tool.
On the other hand, more than 100 different dissemination, citizen awareness and training activities have been organized, including several outside the EU territory. These activities include 9 workshops around the case studies. Moreover, other cultural events, targeted for general public, were organized such as phographical exhibitions and contests. All these activities produced a huge expectation from the local media. 5 virtual tours around the case study with the possibility to get relevant information about the monuments have been also designed
Finally, according to the third target, the market uptake of the innovative solutions, an InnovaConcrete product has already launched to the market, one is under negotiation with a partner company and all technologies reach a TRL 6+. Addtionally, the social-economic analysis tools led to launch of a spin-off consulting company (ITEch-Heritage & Welfare)
