Preparation of waste glass powder by different grinding methods and its utilization in cement-based materials

Abstract

• The incorporation of ethyl alcohol was the most effective mean to refine GP. • Higher strength was exhibited in the case of specimens containing GPw and GPe. • GP showed low pozzolanic reactivity in the early age regardless of fineness. Waste glass, as a hard-to-grind material, was often grinded into powder by ball-mill in order to be used as a supplementary cementitious material in concrete. In this study, three different glass powders (GP) referred to as GPd, GPw and GPe were fabricated by different methods (i.e. dry condition, water condition and ethyl alcohol condition), and the effect of GP on the properties of cement-based materials was systematically evaluated. The results showed that the milling efficiency of GP was significantly affected by grinding condition. Ultrafine GP can be obtained as additional water or ethyl alcohol was added during the grinding process. GP showed low pozzolanic reactivity in the early age, even when the particle size was decreased to about 300 nm. GPd with large particle size and non-absorbent feature could increase effective water-to-cement ratio and thus improved the workability and early strength of specimens containing GPd, while the later strength was lower than that of reference ones due to low pozzolanic reactivity of GPd. In contrast, specimens containing GPw and GPe exhibited higher early mechanical strength than reference specimen due to the filling and acceleration effects of GP. An encouraging result indicated that GPe presented high pozzolanic reactivity at 28 d, which was seldom reported in the literature.