Experimental study of effect additional water on high performance geopolymer concrete

Abstract

The Earth Summit 1997 in Kyoto (Japan), industrialized countries agreed to reduce gas emissions by 21% to avoid global warming due to greenhouse effect with the release of CO2 into the air. From the research result, cement industry sector all over the world contributes about 8 - 10% of total CO2 emission. This number is quite high and if there is not a special action to reduce, CO2 emissions will continue to increase along with the rapid development of infrastructure in various parts of the world including in Indonesia. To support greenhouse effect reduction efforts due to CO2 emissions and environmental conservation, civil engineers in the world are taking steps to achieve Sustainable Concrete Technology, in order to create “Green Concrete”. For that reason in the direction of “Green Concrete”, innovation is needed to reduce or replace cement in the concrete mixing. The ash waste electrical power generating plants of fly ash is a material containing many SiO2 and Al2O3 which can be used to replace the overall of cement in concrete. Geopolymer concrete is a fly ash-based concrete that replaces the entire cement in its manufacture. Workability in mixing geopolymer concrete is very low, due to the rapid reaction of the alkaline solution when it reacts with fly ash. To improve the workability can be added water at the time of mixing. The fly ash used in the mixing from the Paiton power plant in East Java with grain size 12.06 μm with round granules and chemical composition of fly ash containing SiO2, Al2O3 and Fe2O3 with a total of 75.151%. The planned compressive strength of the concrete is 45 MPa, with a variation of 8M, 12M and 16M NaOH molarity and the ratio of NaOH and Na2SiO3 is 1. Addition of water in concrete mixing with variations of 15, 17.5, 20, 22.5 and 25 liters / m3. The results of this study indicate that the more addition of water in the manufacture of geopolymer concrete can also increase the value of slump, but the excessive addition of water will result in a decrease in the compressive strength of the concrete caused by a decrease in the concentration of the alkaline solution. High molarity values will require additional water to reach the same slump value compared to lower NaOH molarity. With the same mix design, the optimal compressive strength at 8M NaOH was 48.18 MPa with 17.5 liters/m3 of water added with a slump of 12 cm, for 12M NaOH the optimal compressive strength was 51.65 MPa with the addition of 20 liter/m3 with 10 cm slump, while for 16M NaOH the optimum compressive strength is 59.70 MPa with 22.5 liters/m3 of water added with a 5 cm slump. The higher the NaOH molarity will result in a higher compressive strength value and geopolymer concrete compressive strength at early age is higher than conventional concrete.