Green Concrete using large quantities of industrial waste such as Fly Ash from India and China

What is it about?

We have sourced fly ash from India from the state of Odisha and examined its characteristics to replace the local Chinese fly ash in novel green concrete that use large quantities of it (80%) to replace Portland cement. This would help reduce pollution due to manufacture and use of Portland cement. It will also help increase the use of fly ash which is a coal combustion byproduct from thermal power plants to be productively utilized instead of disposed of in landfills.

Featured Image

Why is it important?

Thermal power plants burn coal to make electricity. The burning of coal releases vast quantities of greenhouse gases as well as ash particles (what remains after burning of coal) into the atmosphere. Production of Portland cement is also equally polluting process with each tonne of cement resulting in almost 1 tonne of CO2 being released into the atmosphere. This causes global warming and leads to climate change. Therefore, the work reported in the paper addresses both these major environmental problems in a significantly new way. While up until now it was strongly believed that only up to 30% fly ash can be used as a replacement of Portland cement in concrete, our work shows it is possible to replace up to 80% of cement with fly ash and still get very reasonable strengths even at an early age.

Perspectives