Feasibility assessment of rice straw ash as a supplementary cementitious material

Abstract

This paper discusses the feasibility of an agro-waste ash viz., rice straw ash (RSA) as a supplementary cementitious material (SCM). Locally available rice straws were burnt in an uncontrolled manner to prepare the rice straw ash, in order to use in the study. Experiments were conducted to study the pozzolanic activity of ash at different replacement levels. The influence of processing such as sieving is also studied. Furthermore, the mechanical properties of both control and blended concretes were evaluated using compressive strength test and split tensile strength test. The test results point to the fact that the properties of binder as well as concretes are adversely affected by the addition of RSA. This is because the ash was prepared by uncontrolled burning of agro-waste. Thus, the current study re-emphasizes the importance of controlled burning of the agro-waste in order to tap their potential as SCM. This also proves the importance of simple processing techniques like sieving to enhance the properties of blended concrete.