We learned eight years ago that a Dutch team had developed a biological concrete that could heal its own cracks. They said it could be two or three years before it made its way into the wider world—and now we’re looking at its real-world implementations.
The concrete is a collaboration between two scientists named Eric Schlangen and Henk Jonkers, who are today featured in the CNN update on their research. The duo first made headlines in 2012, when they launched their “biocement,” which uses bacteria to repair cracks in concrete that lead to structural deterioration.
Here’s how it works: Traditional concrete aggregates are combined with calcium lactate bacteria and capsules. When cracking in concrete forms, the water soaks in and “activates” the bacteria that are hard-wired to consume calcium lactate. When it does, it creates calcite—a limestone ingredient—which accumulates to fill the void between the cracks.
As Io9’s Robbie Gonzalez wrote on the project in 2012, it was still being tested in a laboratory. CNN visited Jonkers in the Netherlands to find out how progress has been made since then.
Jonkers and his partner used the mixture in a real building—a lifeguard station on a lake. They’ve been monitoring how small cracks formed in the surface, and how the bacteria created limestone to fill them up, much like skin forming a scab and then healing fully. “We were so happy to see that it worked,” he says in the video.
The idea of buildings that can heal themselves has been around for decades—like the architectural nanotechnology used to recreate Neo Tokyo that William Gibson famously imagined. It’s cool to see the technology that was being built in a lab just a few years ago, now being used in real-world buildings.
