Composite Cement Concretes with Industrial Waste Materials as Aggregates

HISTORY

Recent advancements in industrial movements follow a trend of sustainable development. This approach
includes, but is not limited to, the use of environmental friendly materials. These include reusing
materials that basically have no use for anymore or have reached the end of their usefulness.
Environmental movements have pushed for prolonging the life of the Earth through different means
such as reducing wastes generated in our day to day activities, proper waste management, recycling
waste materials, reducing the exhaustion of natural resources, and the likes.

Production of construction materials such as concrete is essential to industrial development. Countries

such as China, who in recent years have increased investments on infrastructures, have also amplified
their demand on concrete. However, cement production requires an array of raw materials that
exhausts the natural resources. These materials include clay, gypsum and limestone. This resulted in
shortage of such materials and caused environmental problems such as irrational over exploitation. Due
to the nature of cement production being unsustainable but inherently essential, different studies have
been developed to reduce the use of natural resources and as a substitute, use recycled industrial waste.

Current Usage

A study in China was conducted where in iron tailings from industrial wastes were used as substitute for
natural sand as aggregate in concrete. Another study conducted in Bangladesh used other industrial
wastes such as scrap glass and steel wastes were used as an aggregate substitute.

Scholars from different parts of the world have recently achieved progress in the performance testing of
concrete with different composite material, mainly metal scraps. It is important to note that natural sand
wasn’t fully replaced in the mix but included portions of iron tailings for proportion.

The experiments show promising results compared to the ordinary cement with purely natural sand as
an aggregate. The cement with metal scraps such as steel and iron tailings exhibited results with more
potential. The composite material possessed a higher compressive strength and flexural strength.
Different proportions showed almost the same results and were evaluated at 3 days, 7 days, and 28 days
mark. However, the material with metal replacement wasn’t better in all aspects.

It was found that the strength development law of the tailings mixes is basically equivalent to that of
natural sand concrete according to the compressive strength. With the increasing of substitutive ratio of
iron ore tailings, the mobility of mixture becomes worse, the water retention of mixture is lower than
that of reference concrete, and the excreting water phenomenon may occur. The compressive strength
of concrete without iron tailing reaches the highest at 7 days age, while the 35% replacement peaks at 3
day and 28 day age.

From the durability experiment on the concrete with 35% replacement of natural aggregate by ore
tailings, the permeability resistance of the tailing mixes is equal to that of the natural sand. Its frost
resistance is slightly lower than that of the one with sand, and its carbonation resistance is equivalent to
that of the control.

Overall metal scraps can be utilized as a partial substitute for natural sand to prepare concrete. It
reduces the amount of natural sand, solves the environmental pollution of industrial wastes, and
promotes the development of green building projects.

Waste metal may have better performances if they were grinded in specific size and shape. Most of the
waste metal was steel fragments; therefore it had better compatibility with concrete. Ductility of bar
beams was higher as there were shear reinforcements and continuation of reinforcement tied end to
end. Investigation on graded waste metal is ongoing and there is also potential for plastic waste
materials. From current findings it could be concluded that waste metal in some extend showed better
performance than traditional bar and could be used in the RCC structure as an alternative of traditional
steel bars or as partial substitution for better performance. This will not only minimize the construction
cost, but also impact on the environment positively by using the recycle waste metal.