(81e) Starch Salt Composites; How to Reduce Water Uptake and Weakening

Starch salt composites have been research for a while at our department and we have established composites that match well with the strength of concrete materials. The composite can be seen as an environmental friendly, low carbon footprint building material. This novel building material is easy to make and consist of roughly 90 % NaCl and 10% starch. The compressive strength lies a bit below concrete, but the tensile strength is higher than concrete.

One of the drawbacks it that the material tends to weaken when exposed to water. In this work we have looked into increasing the water resistance of the material by adding additional polymers and by adding chemicals like citric acid that increase the water resistance.