A review of ground waste glass as a supplementary cementitious material: A focus on alkali-silica reaction

Abstract

The use of glass as an amendment to portland cement concrete serves as a potential alternative to traditionally used supplementary cementitious materials. The use of ground glass provides a potential remedy to issues currently faced by the portland cement industry due to dwindling fly ash production as a result of recent changes in fuel sources for power generation within the United States of America. This manuscript serves to provide the current state of the practice with respect to the use of glass as an alternative supplementary cementitious material. The advantages and limitations of using glass as a cement replacement in the production of concrete are evaluated, particularly with respect to physical and chemical performance. This document summarizes the known performance characteristics of glass amended concretes and mortars, and identifies areas of research that are currently deficient. The general consensus found in the literature concludes that concrete with waste glass as a pozzolan is comparable to control with respect to workability, air content, density, tensile strength, and flexural strength. The compressive strength is reported to be lower than control at early ages, while comparable or higher than control at later ages. Furthermore, it has been reported that the modulus of elasticity is reduced. All of the reviewed literature reported a decrease in expansion caused by alkali-silica reaction when waste glass was used as a pozzolan, with some reporting expansion being reduced below evaluation limits; however, the majority of the evaluations performed used testing methods inappropriate for the inclusion of glass such as American Society for Testing and Materials C1567, which limits the alkali content of supplementary cementitious materials to a maximum of 4.0%.