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A process for improving steel reinforcement in order to triple the lifespan of old bridges and other infrastructure has been developed in the US by the startup of two MIT graduates, Allium Engineering, according to a report by Eris Driva on economix.gr.
According to the American Association of Highway and Transportation Builders, one in three bridges needs repair or replacement, or more than 200,000 bridges across the country. A major culprit in America’s aging infrastructure is rebar, which has accumulated rust, creating cracks in the concrete and making bridges more vulnerable.
New technology proposed by Allium Engineering triples the lifespan of bridges and other structures by using stainless steel cladding to make the reinforcement resistant to corrosion. By eliminating corrosion, infrastructure lasts much longer, requires fewer repairs, and reduces carbon dioxide emissions. The company’s technology is easily integrated into existing steelmaking processes to make U.S. infrastructure more resilient, affordable, and sustainable for the next century.
“In the US, the typical bridge deck lasts an average of about 30 years – we enable a 100-year lifespan,” says Allium co-founder and CEO Steven Jepeal, according to MIT News. “There’s a huge backlog of infrastructure that needs to be replaced, and frankly it’s aging faster than expected, largely because the materials we were using back then weren’t up to the job. We’re trying to take advantage of the momentum of rebuilding America’s infrastructure, but rebuild it in a way that will make it last.” To achieve this, Allium adds a thin protective layer of stainless steel over traditional steel reinforcement to make it more resistant to corrosion. About 100,000 kilograms of Allium’s stainless steel-clad rebar has already been used in construction projects in the US, and the company believes its process can be scaled up quickly, alongside steel mills.
“We integrate our system into the mills so they don’t have to do anything different,” says Jepeal, who founded Allium with Sam McAlpine. “We add everything we need to turn a regular product into a stainless steel-clad product so that every mill out there can make a material that won’t corrode. This is what needs to happen so that all the infrastructure in the world can last longer.”
The Road to Better Bridges
Jepeal and McAlpine decided to start a company that would improve the durability of metals in everyday conditions, working with MIT’s Entrepreneurship Advisory Service and talking to Tata Steel, one of the world’s largest steelmakers. Members of Tata told the founders that one of their biggest problems was steel corrosion. A key early problem the founders set out to solve was depositing corrosion-resistant material without adding significant cost or disrupting existing processes. Steel production traditionally begins by placing huge pieces of precursor steel through machines called rollers at extremely high temperatures to stretch the material.
The founders decided to add the lining before the rolling process. “We go into the mills and get big pieces of steel that go through the steelmaking process, but it’s not the final product, and we deposit stainless steel on the outside of their cheap carbon steel, which is usually just recycled scrap from products like cars and refrigerators,” Jepeal says. “The processed steel then goes through the typical factory process to produce finished products like rebar,” he adds.
Each 40-foot-thick piece of precursor steel is converted into approximately one mile of rebar after the rolling process. The rebar steel processed by Allium is still more than 95 percent regular rebar steel and does not require any special post-processing or handling. “What comes out of the mill looks like regular rebar, it’s just as strong and can be bent, cut and installed in the same ways. But instead of being installed on a bridge and lasting an average of 30 years, it will last 100 years or more.”
Durable Infrastructure
In 2024, Allium’s Billerica, Massachusetts, plant began producing its first commercial cladding material, helping to produce approximately 100 tons of the company’s stainless steel-clad rebar in collaboration with a partner steel mill. This rebar has since been installed on construction projects in California and Florida. Allium’s first facility has the capacity to produce about 1,000 tons of its long-lasting rebar each year, but the company hopes to build more facilities closer to the steel mills it works with, eventually integrating them into steel mill operations. Allium is also experimenting with other cladding materials and composites. In the future, Jepeal sees Allium’s technology being used for things beyond reinforcement, such as railway tracks, steel beams and pipes.