Bacteria Used To Fix Cracked Concrete 177
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at the UK's University of Newcastle have created a new type of bacteria that generates glue to hold together cracks in concrete structures — that means everything from concrete sidewalks to buildings that have been damaged by earthquakes. When the cells have been germinated, they burrow deep into the concrete until they reach the bottom. At this point, the concrete repair process is activated, and the cells split into three types that produce calcium carbonate crystals, act as reinforcing fibers, and produce glue which acts as a binding agent to fill concrete gaps."
Re:Gigacrete looks better (Score:4, Insightful)
Gigacrete [treehugger.com] looks like a better material for building in my opinion. I'll just have bacteria in my yogurt for now.
Nice GigaCrete advert but the bacteria isn't presented as a replacement for concrete or GigaCrete. It's presented as a mechanism to repair existing concrete.
Or are you advocating we raze all existing concrete buildings and tear up all sidewalks?
Re:Okay. (Score:4, Insightful)
Seems like a giant "Just So" story if you ask me.
Lots of pre-programed mutations working perfectly in the laboratory to seal cracks of a known nature.
Activated when the reach the bottom. Bottom? What if there is no bottom? Most cracks in concrete go right thru the slab.
React to the specific PH of the concrete? If only all concrete were the same. Its been in use for several hundred years, and the formula has been constantly evolving.
And nothing is said about the strength. If the concrete was broken by whatever means, what are the chances some bio glue could hold it together against the next insult?
Re:Okay. (Score:3, Insightful)
Lord help us! This the gray goo!
Soon it will be fixing cracks we did not anticipate!
Re:Gigacrete looks better (Score:4, Insightful)
They said the binder was 100% non-toxic. which is only a small percentage of the product (as filler is the rest, up to 80%).
To see another example of "green" being a fib, look up AggRite construction/pavement aggregate.
"decommoditization" of concrete? (Score:5, Insightful)
React to the specific PH of the concrete? If only all concrete were the same. Its been in use for several hundred years, and the formula has been constantly evolving.
Remember Monsanto and "roundup ready" seeds? Now imagine a "bio-healing ready" concrete... concrete that is differentiated by a specific compound formula which is standardized for a specific bacteria (of course several grades of the product combo will exist for both quality and usage differences ... which also allow for market segmentation)
All it will take is some enterprising megacorp with the legal muscle to patent this combo (and defend the patents) and you can effectively raised margin on concrete 10x at least.
Anything can be de-commoditized if it provides unique value and a big enough megacorp.
Re:When does it stop? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Lungs (Score:3, Insightful)
Usually when you say that the bacteria 'likes' acidity it means that at least one of the proteins it depends on requires the acidity to function. If there are several proteins that are essential for the bacteria to live, the probability that all of the required mutations would occur becomes reasonably small. Additionally, even if the bacteria are able to mutate in such a way to live outside the concrete, they would be poorly adapted to that environment, and would most likely become food for something else. That's not even considering the likelihood that the food source the bacteria uses in its concrete environment may not be available elsewhere.
tl;dr:
The amount of change necessary to go from a bacteria that thrives in concrete to a bacteria that thrives in the lungs is large enough (under the expected conditions) to be considered insurmountable.
Re:Okay. (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe this isn't meant as a permanent repair? It would still be a hell of a boon if it worked fast enough that we could use it to temporarily shore up structures until they could be properly repaired.
Re:When does it stop? (Score:1, Insightful)
One would think that that this non-beneficial feature would be evolved out of the bacteria. Kind of hard to survive as the fittest if you kill yourself off.
Re:How do they know where 'the bottom' is? (Score:4, Insightful)
Absolute worst case scenario is a grey goo outbreak being treated basically like a fire (which, when you think about it is the ultimate grey goo machine). There's a limit to how much energy is available for replication, and there's a limit on how efficient you can make your replication (at some level, the replicating nanobots will be literally tearing apart and putting back together materials). Fighting the grey goo only involves tearing about the replicators, not necessarily wasting energy putting the pieces back together into something useful.
In other words, it should be trivial to design a nanobot that tears apart the self-replicators but doesn't waste energy by making copies of itself. This nanobot would be manufactured a head of time and stored for future use, or manufactured in specialist facilities (even in a mobile truck if necessary) that provide the energy input necessary for their production. As long as your facilities have more energy available than the self-replicators do, you'll win out eventually. And the replicators will only have about as much energy available as a fire can produce.
Re:Lungs (Score:5, Insightful)
One has an immune system, and the other looks like concrete.
Re:Interesting (Score:3, Insightful)
How would you know? You didn't even read the damn thing, as is apparent from your questions, some of which are addressed in the damn article in the first place.
Re:Gigacrete looks better (Score:3, Insightful)
I had the same thought... wouldn't bottom ash be essentially "distillate of everything toxic left behind by the burn process"...??
As to the other fillers... what makes concrete strong isn't just the binder, it's also (perhaps mostly) the character of the filler. Organics decompose over time. Now what.. you've got binder and decomposition products, but no filler. Explain to me how that retains its structural strength and integrity? Not only that, but with varied fillers, how do you achieve predictable structural strength?
As to the case you cite, how about this:
http://caselaw.findlaw.com/pa-superior-court/1175891.html [findlaw.com]
Reusing waste products is great, but let's not kid ourselves that they're suitable substitutes for everything else.