Value Added Product of Lightweight Cement from Industrial By-Products Using Geopolymer Technique

Abstract

In construction and building material sector, Lightweight Cement (LWC) has been receiving much more attention due to some of its advantages compared to other lightweight materials e.g. wood, foam and plastic. The method of incorporating tiny air bubbles into cementitious matrix for lightweight cement production is widely used as it could achieve good engineering properties with efficient production process. Conventional methods, Autoclaved Aerated Cement (AAC) and Portland cement-Cellular Lightweight Cement (CLC), use Portland cement as a main material which could lead to a huge disturbance to natural sources as well as release massive amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) to the atmosphere during its calcination. To achieve green construction material scheme, an attempt to utilize industrial wastes (by-products) as raw starting materials have been developing. One among those value-added approaches is OPC-less alkaline-activated cement from by-products, called Geopolymer technique. The main aim of this paper is to develop lightweight cement by using geopolymer technique with (CLC) method, called GP-CLC system, in order to optimize both economical aspects and engineering properties. The preliminary results show that the compressive strength of GP-CLC cannot reach that level of AAC system, but the strength was higher than the conventional OPC-CLC. The main challenge is that unit CO2 emission can be significantly reduce by using GP-CLC system as OPC consumption is replaced by by-product, fly ash.