Abstract
This study assessed and elucidated the influence of fruit garbage effective microorganisms’ liquid product in improving the strength and other properties of concrete in terms of surface chemistry when added to concrete as partial replacement of mixing water. One control specimen was made along with four different mixes of 3, 5, 10 and 15% of the locally made liquid bio-product as replacement of the required mixing water during the concrete production. The experiments conducted on both control and liquid bio-product blended concretes were Proctor penetration test for setting time, workability and slump test for compressive strength. The results of the tests indicated that the locally made effective microorganisms’ liquid product exerted retarding effect on the setting time of the blended concretes, as well as enhanced their workability. The result further indicated that, amongst all the locally made liquid bio-product blended concretes, the concrete specimen with 3% content possessed the highest compressive strength of 29.8N/mm 2 and 35.5N/mm 2 at 28 and 56 curing days, respectively. All these enhanced concrete properties were influenced by changing the surface hydration behaviour of cement in the concrete mixture, which varied widely upon addition of liquid bio-product at different percentage contents. Therefore, the addition of effective microorganisms’ liquid product in the concrete mixture showed promising performance and thus, can be used as a low-cost and environmentally friendly admixture in the design of concrete. Keywords: Effective Microorganisms, concrete, Compressive strength, workability, setting time DOI : 10.7176/CER/11-6-04 Publication date :July 31 st 2019
Highlights
For many years, concrete is doubtless the most widely used construction material due to its attractive strength characteristics (Mehta & Monteiro, 2005)
Decreasing the water-to-cement ratio of a concrete mix is always accompanied with a drawback of loss of workability, which generally compensated by the addition of chemical admixtures
It is the lactic acid bacteria that was responsible for the final pH of 3.8 of the effective microorganisms (EM) liquid product, which enhanced the breakdown of fruit garbage and fermented the garbage materials within 10 days more rapidly
Summary
Concrete is doubtless the most widely used construction material due to its attractive strength characteristics (Mehta & Monteiro, 2005). When concrete is good enough to be used at normal construction environment, its performance becomes deteriorated when used in relatively adverse environments (Venkovic et al, 2014). Such apart, the most commonly problems faced in the used of concrete are setting time, workability, earlier and later strengths of concrete. Decreasing the water-to-cement ratio of a concrete mix is always accompanied with a drawback of loss of workability, which generally compensated by the addition of chemical admixtures. Chemical admixtures are introduced to improve some properties of concrete such as strength, workability, setting time and so on, but are expensive and not environmentally-friendly. Effective microorganisms’ liquid product for concrete production is being produced locally and used in the construction industry to promote environmental sustainability
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