Sustainability Studies on Concrete Partial Replacement of Sugarcane Granular Bagasse-ash in Cement

Abstract

In recent times, the research in every branch of science and technology is focusing on utilisation of waste materials from different sources such as agricultural, industrial etc., It is both economically beneficial as well as helps in creating a pollution free environment. Various agricultural waste such a sugar cane bagasse ash is also utilised in recent times as it has high amount of silica content. It is a waste product from sugar refinery industry. With the increase in production of sugar, the disposal of bagasse ash becomes difficult. Hence utilisation of bagasse ash as a replacement to cement was experimented by few researchers and found that certain paste properties could be increased by using bagasse ash at certain percentage replacements. In this research, the bagasse ash was replaced by weight of ordinary Portland cement in concrete. The replacement percentage varied from 0 to 15% with a 5% interval. The proportions of cement aggregate and water was finalised by following standard mix design procedure given in IS-10262. Both fresh and hardened concrete properties were tested in each mix. It was observed that the slump value was decreased with the increase in bagasse ash content, the hardened properties like flexural strength, compressive strength, have indicated no major difference in strength levels up to 10% replacement of bagasse ash. Similar trend was observed in the results of 7, 14 and 28 days. With further research, the bagasse ash replacement in concrete can be made more sustainable.