Effect of air-cooled slag and granulated blast furnace slag addition as substitutor on fly ash based geopolymer

Abstract

Air Cooled Slag and Granulated Blast Furnace Slag is a waste material from steelmaking process that not utilized, even though it rich in silica and CaO that can increase mechanical properties of building materials. Therefore, this material is potential as substitutor for geopolymer. Geopolymer is an alkali activated material consists of aluminosilicate precursor activated by NaOH and waterglass as activator. One of the common aluminosilicate binder used is fly ash. Geopolymer was made by mixing fly ash and air cooled slag or granulated blast furnace slag in certain ratio with alkali activator solution. The aim for this study is to obtain the best ratio of slag to fly ash binder that produces the highest compressive strength. The best compressive strength was 29.80 MPa achieved in fly ash:air cooled slag 40:60 ratio and 31.33 MPa achieved in fly ash:granulated blast furnace slag 40:60 ratio. X-Ray Diffraction test showed the appearance of anorthite (Ca, Na (Al, Si)4 O8). FTIR characterization showed the appearance of siloxo and sialate bonding which commonly found in geopolymerization.