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Superabsorbent polymers (SAPs) have potential to be used as healing agent in self-healing concrete due to their property to attract moisture from the environment and their capacity to promote autogenous healing. A possible drawback, however, is their uptake of mixing water during concrete manufacturing, resulting in an increased volume of macro-pores in the hardened concrete. To limit this drawback, newly developed SAPs with a high swelling and pHsensitiveness were developed and tested within the FP7 project HEALCON. Evaluation of their self-sealing performance occurred through a water permeability test via water flow, a test method also developed within HEALCON. Three different sizes of the newly developed SAP were compared with a commercial SAP. Swelling tests in cement filtrate solution indicated that the commercial and in-house synthesized SAPs performed quite similar, but the difference between the swelling capacity at pH 9 and pH 13 is more pronounced for the self-synthesized SAPs. Moreover, in comparison to the commercial SAPs, less macro-pores are formed in the cement matrix of mixes with self-synthesized SAPs and the effect on the mechanical properties is lower, but not negligible, when using high amounts of SAPs. Although the immediate sealing effect of cracks in mortar was the highest for the commercial SAPs, the in-house made SAPs with a particle size between 400 and 600 μm performed the best with regard to crack closure (mainly CaCO 3 precipitation) and self-sealing efficiency, after exposing the specimens to 28 wet-dry cycles. Some specimens could even withstand a water pressure of 2 bar.

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Biogenic self-healing cementitious materials target on the closure of micro-cracks with precipitated inorganic minerals originating from bacterial metabolic activity. Dormant bacterial spores and organic mineral compounds often constitute a biogenic healing agent. The current paper focuses on the investigation of the most appropriate organic carbon source to be used as component of a biogenic healing agent. It is of great importance to use an appropriate organic source, since it will first ensure an optimal bacterial performance in terms of metabolic activity, while it should, second, affect the least the properties of the cementitious matrix. The selection is made among three different organic compounds, namely calcium lactate (CaL), calcium acetate (CaA), and sodium gluconate (NaG). The methodology that was used for the research was based on continuous and non-continuous oxygen consumption measurements of washed bacterial cultures and on compressive strength tests on mortar cubes. The oxygen consumption investigation revealed a preference for CaL and CaA, but an indifferent behavior for NaG. The compressive strength on mortar cubes with different amounts of either CaL or CaA (up to 2.24% per cement weight) was not or it was positively affected when the compounds were dissolved in the mixing water. In fact, for CaL, the increase in compressive strength reached 8%, while for CaA, the maximum strength increase was 13.4%.