Effect of curing condition on strength of geopolymer concrete

Abstract

Increasing emphasis on energy conservation and environmental protection has led to the investigation of the alternatives to customary building materials. Some of the significant goals behind understaking such investigations are to reduce the greenhouse gasemissions and minimize the energy required formaterial production.The usage of concrete around the world is second only to water. Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) is conventionally used as the primary binder to produce concrete. The cement production is a significant industrial activity in terms of its volume and contribution to greenhouse gas emission. Globally, the production of cement contributes at least 5 to 7 % of <TEX>$CO_2$</TEX>. Another major problem of the environment is to dispose off the fly ash, a hazardous waste material, which is produced by thermal power plant by combustion of coal in power generation processes. The geopolymer concrete aims at utilizing the maximum amount of fly ash and reduce <TEX>$CO_2$</TEX> emission in atmosphere by avoiding use of cement to making concrete. This paper reports an experimental work conducted to investigate the effect of curing conditions on the compressive strength of geopolymer concrete prepared by using fly ash as base material and combination of sodium hydroxide and sodium silicate as alkaline activator.