Sustainable use of waste glass sand and waste glass powder in alkali-activated slag foam concretes: Physico-mechanical, thermal insulation and durability characteristics

Abstract

In many countries, the safe removal of the massive volume of waste glass has emerged as a major environmental priority. However, the manufacture of concrete pollutes the environment with greenhouse gasses and consumes vast amounts of natural resources. As a result, the construction industry has recently been paying more and more attention to reusing glass waste to produce environmentally friendly building materials. This work aims to manufacture environmentally friendly alkali-activated foam concrete (AAFC) by examining the combined effects of waste glass powder (GP) and waste glass sand (GS) as partial substitutes for granulated blast-furnace slag (GBFS) and river sand (RS) respectively. The present study involved the experimentation of AAFC mixtures with GP contents of 0 and 10 % as a replacement for GBFS and GS contents of 0, 25, 50 and 100 % as a replacement for RS. Eight AAFC mixtures with fixed alkaline solution-to-binder (A/B) ratio of 0.5 were fabricated and cured at 80 °C for 24 h. The effects of different GS and GP contents on the oven dry density, flowability, water absorption, porosity, sorptivity, thermal conductivity, compressive strength, flexural strength, high temperature resistance and hydrochloric acid (HCI) resistance of AAFC mixtures were evaluated. Microstructure of the mixtures was analyzed by SEM and EDS. The findings indicated that the AAFC mixture with 50 % GS exhibited the best mechanical properties with a compressive strength of 3.48 MPa, representing a 71.4 % increase over the reference mixture. The mixture with 50 %GS also exhibited the lowest sorptivity regardless of GP content. Thermal conductivity enhanced by 4.6 and 7.0 % by replacing RS with 50 % GS at 0 and 10 % GP content. Replacing RS with GS and GBFS with GP increased the high temperature and acid resistance of the AAFC mixtures and the best high temperature and acid resistance were obtained for the mixtures containing 100 %GS and 10 %GP.