Development of sustainable geopolymer concrete using eco friendly waste materials

Abstract

Infrastructure development plays a major role in the country s economic growth but also leads to greenhouse gas emissions. To reduce this impact, there have been many initiatives at the academic, industrial, and government levels to improve the built environment successfully. To overcome the problems, geopolymer concrete has been introduced which has the potential to completely eliminate conventional concrete. Even though there have been significant works carried out on geopolymer concrete, using eco-friendly materials, only limited studies were carried out on the light weight geopolymer concrete. This study focuses on the development of light weight geo polymer concrete and the results were compared with the control mix. In this study, geopolymer concrete with GGBS (binder), manufactured sand (M-sand; fine aggregate), coconut shell and crushed granite (coarse aggregate) were used to produce GPCSC and GPCC (control mix). A preliminary study was carried out for the selection of a mix proportion through trial mixes. The important variables considered in the present study include the amount of binder, fine aggregate, coarse aggregate, molarity of sodium hydroxide, sodium silicate to sodium hydroxide ratio and alkaline binder ratio. Influence of different variables on engineering properties of geopolymer concrete was also investigated. From the trial mixes, two mixes were used to study the properties of geopolymer concrete GPCSC (1:2.53:1.05) and GPCC (1:4.15:3.56) with an alkaline/binder ratio of 0.65. An alkaline activator was prepared by combining sodium silicate (Na2O, 13%; SiO2, 30%; and water, 57% by mass: Na2SiO3) and sodium hydroxide (NaOH) solution with 10 Molarity. newline