Waste Glass Dust to Reduce Alkali Silica Reaction

Abstract

Millions of tons of generated glass are wasted each year and being added to landfills in which glass takes one million years to decompose. Since the wasted glass contains a significant amount of silica, a main component in other supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs), this research focuses on whether waste glass powder can be used to reduce alkali-silica reaction (ASR). The glass powders were created from either a dust collection or by additional crushing, with possible blending of an existing SCM fly ash. In addition, compressive strengths of mortar mixtures with each glass powder or combined with fly ash at varying replacements of cement were also monitored. Other common SCMs were compared to the glass powders and fly ash for ASR mortar performance. The glass dust was more effective at reducing ASR than the crushed glass. With moderately reactive aggregates, all combinations of glass or fly ash at 40 percent replacement of cement were found to be acceptable for ASR resistance. However, all glass powders were also found to reduce strength of the mortar.