Development of banana fibers and wood bottom ash modified cement mortars

Abstract

Many plant wastes have been generated from agriculture for years and as the current global drive towards a green-economy continues, more agro-based wastes will be generated in the future. Some of these wastes are being used presently as a form of renewable energy and result into ashes which are sent to landfills. However, previous studies have shown that ashes could be used as cement replacement while others considered the use of these agricultural wastes from plants as fiber reinforcement in cement appli-cations. In this study, an environment friendly solution was provided to replace cement with wood bot-tom ashes at 10, 15, 20 and 25% levels and modify the mortars produced with styrene butadiene polymers for improved strength. Also, as a way of providing sustainable path towards utilization of wastes from plant fibers, banana fibers were treated with alkaline solution and used to reinforce the polymer modified cement mortars. The developed cement composites were subjected to mechanical tests, microstructural, elemental, functional group and thermal conductivity analyses. It is realistic to conclude that optimum performance of the composite can be obtained when cement is replaced by up to 10% of wood bottom ash, 1.5% of banana fiber content and of 0.3% of styrene butadiene polymer emulsion The composite developed provided good thermal insulation properties and could be used in some selected cement based applications.