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The construction of the new A16 Rotterdam freeway involves an enormous amount of concrete mortar. Dyckerhoff Basal, which, with four concrete-mortar plants in the vicinity, "sandwiches" the A16 Rotterdam as it were, was commissioned by construction consortium De Groene Boog to supply a total of 400,000 m3 to supply concrete mortar. By using special blast furnace cement in the various mixtures, the CO2-footprint up to about 55% lower than that of Portland cement.
The first deliveries of concrete mortar started in 2019, begins Ron Mulder, concrete technologist at Dyckerhoff Basal. "Initially, De Groene Boog had the idea of working with a mobile concrete plant, but finding the right location in this busy area proved to be a difficult task. Since we are close by with our plants in the West region (Delft, Rotterdam, Dordrecht and The Hague), the choice was quickly made. At peak times, the power plant in Nieuwegein was also switched in." One of the biggest peaks involved the supply of over 29,000 m3 concrete mortar in one month. "That was really quite a challenge, partly because of the global problems with cement supplies. But even that all worked out well in the end."
Dyckerhoff Basal compiled the mix list in consultation with the concrete technologists at De Groene Boog. "These are mixtures of different strength classes, ranging from C12/15 to C60/75 in all kinds of consistencies to self-compacting concrete," Ron explains. "The different cements come from German Dyckerhoff plants, where we mainly use the blast furnace cement (CEM III/B 42.5N) from Neuss and ECODUR (CEM III/B-L) from Neuwied. In total, this achieves a 52-55% reduction in CO2 realized compared to the application of standard Portland cements." Since 2019, Dyckerhoff Basal has delivered approximately 380,000 m3 of concrete mortar on the project, the largest quantity of which was for the benefit of the Rottemer Tunnel.
