Abstract
Due to the considerable amount of waste plastics and polymers that are produced annually, the introduction of these waste products in construction materials is becoming a recurrent solution to recycle them. Among polymers, polyamide represents an important proportion of polymer waste. In this study, sustainable and lightweight mortars were designed and elaborated, substituting the aggregates by polyamide powder waste. Mortars were produced with various dosages of cement/aggregates, and the polyamide substitutions were 25, 50, 75, and 100% of the aggregates. The aim of this paper is to determine the density and the compressive strength of the manufactured mortars to observe the feasibility for being employed as masonry or rendering and plastering mortars. Results showed that with increasing polymer substitution, lower densities were achieved, ranging from 1850 to 790 kg/m3 in modified mortars. Mortars with densities below 1300 kg/m3 are cataloged as lightweight mortars. Furthermore, compressive strength also decreased with more polyamide substitution. Obtained values in recycled mortars were between 15.77 and 2.10 MPa, but the majority of the values (eight out of 12) were over 5 MPa. Additionally, an economic evaluation was performed, and it was observed that the use of waste polyamide implies an important cost reduction, apart from the advantage of not having to manage this waste material. Consequently, not only the mechanical properties of the new recycled materials were verified as well as its economic viability.
Highlights
At present, there is an international agreement about the necessity of sustainable development with the aim of a more efficient employment and management of the limited natural resources, which includes the promotion of recycling and reuse of waste materials [1]
For plastics and polymers, which are two of the main industrial byproducts and home waste materials [2], various processes are being conducted to reuse and recycle them, such as mechanical recycling, chemical recycling, and energy recovery [3,4,5,6,7]
The introduction as fillers in other materials is becoming a possible solution for plastic and polymeric waste materials, especially in construction materials, with examples of reuse in various structural materials, such as concrete [8,9,10,11,12,13], mortars [14,15,16,17,18], bituminous materials for pavements [19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30], and gypsum [31,32,33,34,35,36]
Summary
There is an international agreement about the necessity of sustainable development with the aim of a more efficient employment and management of the limited natural resources, which includes the promotion of recycling and reuse of waste materials [1]. With regard to the use of polyamide powder in construction materials, some previous analyses have been conducted about the characterization of recycled mortars with polyamide powder waste, analyzing their durability and their microstructure [39,43,44]. These previous papers showed that introducing polyamide powder waste is suitable for mortars by analyzing the properties of fresh and hardened mortar like workable life, water retention, water vapor permeability, porosity, adhesion, thermogravimetry, and durability (by determining the frost resistance, the resistance to ageing by thermal shock and to salt crystallization, and by testing the potential expansion of aggregates from hydration reactions). An economical evaluation was conducted to verify if the employment of this waste material offers a production cost reduction
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