Ecology, Environment and Conservation Paper

STRENGTH STUDY ON FLY ASH BASED ECO FRIENDLY GEOPOLYMER CONCRETE

R. Anuradha, V. Sreevidya and R. Venkatasubramani

Abstract

Ordinary Portland cement is a major construction material worldwide. The net cement production is expected to reach 2 billion tonnes in 2010. The major increases will take place in China and India. The global cement industry contributes about 7% of the total man made green house gas emissions to the earths atmosphere, more than the airline industries. This Research is aimed to give awareness about the green house gas emissions from the cement manufacturing industries and the methods of reducing this by the fully using fly ash in concrete. On the other hand, the climate change due to global warming, one of the greatest environmental issues has become a major concern during the last one decade. The global warming is caused by the emission of greenhouse gases, such as CO2, to the atmosphere by human activities. Among the greenhouse gases, CO2 contributes about 65% of global warming. The cement industry is responsible for about 7% of all CO2 emissions, because the production of one ton of Portland cement emits approximately one ton of CO2 into the atmosphere Although the use of Portland cement is still unavoidable until the foreseeable future, many efforts are being made in order to reduce the use of Portland cement in concrete. In terms of reducing the global warming, the geopolymer technology could reduce the CO2 emission to the atmosphere caused by cement and aggregates industries by about 80% Inspired by the Geopolymer technology and the fact that fly ash is a waste material abundantly available. This study is aimed to achieve M20 grade of concrete using the basic materials like Fine Aggregate, Coarse Aggregate and the binder material as fly ash. Various properties like Workability, Initial setting time, compressive strength and Split tensile Strength has been studied and compared with conventional concrete.