Use of waste glass powder toward more sustainable geopolymer concrete

Abstract

The influence of waste glass powder (WGP) with fly ash in certain proportions on geopolymer concrete (GPC) was investigated by exchanging different proportions of molarity and WGP percentages in GPC. For this objective, fly ash was altered with WGP having percentages of 10%, 20%, 30%, and 40%, and the effect of molarity of sodium hydroxide (NaOH) was examined. The compressive strength tests, splitting tensile tests, and flexural strength tests were conducted. The workability and setting time were also evaluated. With the addition of WGP, the workability for molarities (M) of 11, 13, and 16 NaOH reduced by an average of 17%, 10%, and 67%, respectively. The findings showed that the slump values decreased as the molarity and WGP percentages increased. Molarity significantly affected the setting time, but WGP had no effect on the setting time. Although high molarity increased the capacity, this had a noticeable negative effect on the setting time and workability. This study demonstrated that WGP had a slight negative effect on the capacity and workability. Furthermore, when the combined effects of WGP and NaOH molarity were taken into account, the use of 10% WGP with M13 NaOH was recommended to obtain the optimum sustainable GPC considering both fresh and hardening properties. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analysis was done on the samples, too.