Sustainable Concrete with Everdure Caltite System from Cementaid

Sustainable Concrete Key To Sustainable Profits

Everdure Caltite System Concrete: Sulphate & Chloride Environments

"Everdure CALTITE" is a time-proven Hydrophobic Pore-blocking Ingredient (HPI) for waterproofing and corrosion-proofing of structural concrete. CALTITE-modified concrete has a more than 50-year successful track record of waterproof, corrosion-free service under some of the world's most severely corrosive environments. Everdure CALTITE is manufactured and supplied around the world by the Cementaid Group.

The Everdure CALTITE ingredient is a liquid included in the fresh concrete mix during batching, replacing an equal amount of batching water (30 litres per cubic metre of concrete).

Everdure "CALTITE" HPI reverses the normal capillary "wicking" or absorptive action in concrete, producing instead hardened concrete with a uniformly Hydrophobic Matrix® throughout, as well as physical capillary pore-blocking components. These actively expel water and any contained salts or acids and prevent their re-entry, either by capillary action or hydrostatic pressure.

Under marine or acidic conditions, the interior of Everdure CALTITE concrete is unaffected by acids or salts in contact with its surface, protecting the matrix against acid attack and chloride contamination and protecting the reinforcement against wetting and chloride induced corrosion.

Everdure CALTITE HPI significantly extends the maintenance-free service life of reinforced concrete structures exposed to marine or other salt environments. Its effects have been measured extending the time to activation of embedded reinforcement by a factor of 50 times compared to the same high quality mix "without" Caltite, and has a successful history of use in this application spanning almost 50 years.

Case Study - Long Term Performance:
The effects of Cementaid's Hydrophobic Pore-blocking Ingredients (HPI) ("Caltite" & "3CC") are permanent. Reinforced 25Mpa "Caltite" concrete placed in the hot, tidal salt pans in South Australia's Port Pirie in 1962 remains in excellent condition after 40 years despite a cement content of only around 280Kg per cubic metre.

Engineering & Water Supply Dept; Government of South Australia
In 1960, un-reinforced OPC concrete pipeline support chairs for BHP Billiton were cast in a tidal salt pan in Port Pirie, Spencer's Gulf, South Australia. (1:2:4 mix, @ approx. 280Kg OPC / m3)

Groundwater Analysis:

sulphates @ 7,200 mg/Lt.
chlorides @ 53,000 mg/Lt

After less than two years exposure under these extreme conditions, all of the ordinary concrete chairs suffered severe sulphate attack causing disintegration of the cement matrix.

Additional chairs were cast in 1962 using exactly the same mix, but incorporating Everdure Caltite @ 30 Lts / m3, as well as steel reinforcement.

After 20 years in service, the plain concrete (right) has continued to suffer significant spalling & fretting damage. By contrast, the reinforced "Everdure CALTITE" concrete (left) has remained in excellent condition, with no reinforcement corrosion, no sulphate attack and only minor surface etching.

The support chairs were inspected and photographed again in 2004, after 40+ years exposure.

After 40 years in-service, the normal concrete chairs are suffering extreme corrosion-distress from severe sulphate attack and are near to collapse, By contrast however, the same mix, except containing Cementaid's Everdure CALTITE HPI to replace an equal amount of batch water (30 Lts. / m3), remains in excellent condition, fully serviceable with NO corrosion and maintenance-free, despite more than 40 years exposure under extremely severe hot, sulphate & chloride conditions.

In Australia call 1300 30 40 48 or visit www.cementaid.com for international.