EXCLUSIVE: Nigeria To Tackle Building Collapse With Pozzolana Supplement-NBRRI DG
Director General of the Nigerian Building and Roads Research Institute, (NBRRI), Professor Samson Duna has said that the Institute has experimental tests conducted on pozzolana, results positive and the product expected to be available in the market soon.
The Director General said this while speaking exclusively to TheFact Nigeria on reasons for the incessant building collapse incidents in the country and government’s intervention efforts.
Although the worrisome trend has been rampant in the previous years, in some of the most recent happenings, Nigeria recorded no fewer than 43 building collapse cases in 2019, according to a report by the Building Collapse Prevention Guild and a heightened nmber in 2020 respectively.
Prof. Duna said: “The next step we are doing now is to construct an infrastructure using the produced pozzolana. And very soon, we want to test the durability of the infrastructure.
“Pozzolana can be natural or artificial. It is a material that in the presence of water, it does not behave cementatious but in the presence of hydro-oxide, when an oxide is added to it in the presence of water, it behaves like cementatious material.
“Pozzolana can be produced from natural aspects and artificial. From the artificial, you can get it either from agricultural or industtrial waste. NBRRI has taken the giant step of producing and constructing a plant to produce this pozzolana.
“Am happy to inform you that presently, we have two plants in the country. One in Bokkos, Jos and the other one in Otta, that produce this pozzolana. The one in Otta produces pozzolana from agricultural waste. While the one in Bokkos produces from natural waste such as these lighter stones we use in cleaning our legs. It is called volcanic ash.
“These are what we call volcanic ash. Some they use it, its called scoria. All these scoria are natural materials that are obtained from waste. This waste, you use as raw materials in producing your pozzolana. So NBRRI has produced pozollanas, both from Bokkos and Otta.
“These materials that have been produced are backed and we have taken the step to do research on these two materials. We have conducted a good test trying to assess their quality, comparing it with cement. We did that both for Otta and Bokkos.
“Once it has met up the requirement, then we can start making noise but so far, I am happy to inform you that the result obtained from the experimental test conducted on the pozzolana has been positive and we are strongly believing that very soon, pozzolana will be in the market.
“We are not just going to talk, we will have experimental results to back our findings. By so doing, the society will be convinced that the pozzolana we are producing will meet the test of time.”
