Experimental analysis on consumption of manufacturing waste in road construction and its environmental effects

Abstract

All over the world, there has been a crisis of exploiting the natural resources for the development of surrounding environment in aid of construction industry. Also, it has been noted that, due to the technological boom, the waste accumulation has also been in a very huge proportion which is capable of causing serious environmental effects. Hence, an attempt is made to utilize the dumped waste has a replacement in road industry, which has made a greater impact0 with high prospects. The waste material that we have considered is copper slag from the unit situated at Tuticorin, Tamil Nādu, India, which generates 2600 tons of copper slag per day. In this industry, the copper slag waste after the treatment has been dumped in and around the land premises available at the industry itself due to insufficient utilization and also 10 to 20 tons of dry sludge is produced per day from the existing common effluent treatment plant. Hence in this research work, we recommend to use these waste materials over the construction of road through the evaluation of their required properties such as Physical and Chemical. The waste sample materials are tested for the determination of geotechnical characteristics by mixing them with the local clayey soils in the range of 25% to 75%. The probability of using these mixes in the sub grade of road pavement was studied in a detailed manner by conducting laboratory tests. The possibility of replacing the fine aggregate with copper slag in bituminous slag has been investigated. It was concluded that copper slag cannot be individually used as a sub base material. By means of conducting the necessary laboratory test, due to the dumping of slag around the premises causing environmental effects are evaluated and from which it has been identified that heavy metal concentration were in lower ratio than the pollution limits. The detailed technical specification over the design of utilizing the expected waste at the road pavement are discussed along with their data generated through the tests.