The effective and long-term preservation of modern reinforced concrete heritage is an ambitious challenge that has recently been drawing increasing interest among the scientific community, conservators, and stakeholders. The quick and tragic deterioration of reinforced concrete structures is putting an important part of our heritage at risk, thereby jeopardizing its transmission to future generations. To address these issues, research on new protective materials for reinforced concrete has increased exponentially over the past decade. 

The main challenge of the PRIN 2022M4KCKP ECOforCONCRETE project “Smart and eco-sustainable materials for the long-term and safe protection of concrete heritage” is to develop innovative solutions for the effective, reliable and sustainable preservation of reinforced concrete heritage by hindering the degradation processes that affect its chemical and physical stability. To cope with these issues, research activities are focused on developing multifunctional materials that combine corrosion inhibitors and salt crystallization inhibitors, which are safe for the cultural heritage, but also for the operators and the environment. 

The new products are designed and developed to be applied on the surface of already existing reinforced concrete heritage structures, thereby enabling non-invasive conservation interventions. In addition, another goal of this project is to develop new building materials that will contain the protective products directly within them, so that they are already embedded in the cementitious matrix at the construction stage.