#geo-polymer

Experimental Investigation on Mineral Content of Fly Bottom Ash and Strength Characteristics of Fly Bottom Ash Bricks - A Review

by Arunkumar. G | Jai Kumaresh. B | Arokia Jerome. D | Parameswaran. P | Rajkumar. T "Experimental Investigation on Mineral Content of Fly Bottom Ash and Strength Characteristics of Fly Bottom Ash Bricks - A Review" 

Published in International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (ijtsrd), ISSN: 2456-6470, Volume-3 | Issue-1, December 2018, 

URL: http://www.ijtsrd.com/papers/ijtsrd19064.pdf

Direct Link: http://www.ijtsrd.com/engineering/mechanical-engineering/19064/ experimental-investigation-on-mineral-content-of-fly-bottom-ash-and-strength-characteristics-of-fly-bottom-ash-bricks-%C3%A2%E2%82%AC%E2%80%9C-a-review/arunkumar-g

open access journal of engineering, ugc approved journals for engineering, call for paper engineering

New Post has been published on http://www.deepgreenfutures.com/2018/11/26/construction-material-shortage/

Construction Material Shortage Aided by Recycling Waste

Breakthrough in Recycling Could Meet Construction Material Shortage

Fraunhofer Institute creates new process for recycling construction waste.

From forconstructionpros.com by Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft Nov. 13, 2018 In an age of a construction boom, raw materials and supplies thereof are being placed under more and more supply pressure, while the environmental damage wrought by the leftovers of construction work is growing and growing.

Germany’s Fraunhofer institute has worked on a compromise solution to both these problems, in the form of a €3.3m research project over the past three years. The project has yielded promising results: In addition to aerated concrete from building rubble there are also acoustic building materials and components made of mineral granules.

The full findings will be presented at the BAU 2019 trade fair in Munich, held from January 14-19.

One of the key aspects of the research was to do something constructive with the around five million metric tons of fine-grained building rubble left behind during construction work in Germany each year – to give an idea, this is around 12.5% of Germany’s sand and gravel requirement for its construction industry.

Hitherto this high-value material has often ended up in landfills or roads, but the Fraunhofer Institutes for Building Physics IBP, for Material Flow and Logistics IML, for Environmental, Safety and Energy Technology UMSICHT, and for Optronics, Systems Technology and Image Analysis IOSB together have come up with the BauCycle process, which upcycles the waste into high-quality building materials.

The process has the ultimate aim of transforming the mix of minerals within construction waste into a sustainable resource and demonstrate potential applications in construction, while there is also a target of setting up a dynamic market platform where the raw materials are traded as commodities.

During the process, the rubble and other waste is sorted down to a size of 1mm. The researchers have developed an opto-pneumatic detector that enables fine fractions to be separated on the basis of the color, brightness and chemical composition of the particles; it is even capable of distinguishing sulfates from silicates. The technology involved can achieve a throughput of 1.5 metric tonnes per hour.

In the best-case scenario, four clean aggregates may be recycled and reused to produce aerated concrete, a light building material with good thermal insulation properties. It is suitable for building two-story houses and as indoor insulation. Another project finding was that a combination of bricks and recovered concrete can be used to make geopolymers, a cement-free building material that is strong and acid-resistant, much like concrete. Geopolymers have the added advantage of a very low carbon footprint. Further research has also yielded a prototype of a sound-absorbing, open-pored panel made of granulates which matches up to current market materials for sound-absorption.

All the materials will be on display at the Fraunhofer stand in January.

“The Fraunhofer Institutes have been involved in a huge number of technological breakthroughs across industry in 2018,” says Robert Herrmann, CEO of economic development agency Germany Trade & Invest.

“They are an integral part of one of Germany’s most prized assets, a vibrant R&D landscape with numerous pioneering institutes and research centres constantly driving for disruptive innovation.

“Over the past 20 years, the amount spent on R&D in Germany has doubled from around 1.5% of GDP to just over 3 per cent in 2016, a level of €92.2bn.

“Germany has become a place of innovation, where future solutions can be found and where solid investment in the future is rewarded. This breakthrough success in the construction industry is a perfect example of how Germany’s R&D landscape rewards shrewd investment. ”

New Post has been published on http://www.deepgreenfutures.com/2018/11/06/3d-printing-housing-project/

3D Printing Housing Project: The World’s First Commercial Housing

The world’s first commercial housing project based on 3D printing

From PBCToday.co.uk Nov. 2, 2018

Project Milestone is building the world’s first 3D printed concrete homes that will actually be lived in

This is a 3D Printing Housing Project!

The five 3D printed concrete homes will be built consecutively, all meeting modern comfort standards and building regulations. The first, a single-floor, three-room 95m2 house, is expected to be ready for occupation in mid-2019. All the concrete elements will be printed at the Eindhoven University of Technology.

The time between design and realization is relatively long for first property, as all the engineering is being done for the first time ever, but construction time is expected to shorten radically as the project progresses.

The other four homes will be multi-story properties with printed concrete floors and roofs.

The fifth home will be manufactured entirely on site. The homes are being planned for Bosrijk, a new residential area in Eindhoven located in parkland and near the Beatrix Canal.

Location: Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Project team: City of Eindhoven, Eindhoven Completion: 2019 onward University of Technology, Van Wijnen, Vesteda, Weber Beamix and Witteveen+Bos.

Source: https://www.pbctoday.co.uk/news/planning-construction-news/project-milestone-3d-printed-concrete-homes/48572/

New Post has been published on http://www.deepgreenfutures.com/2018/11/03/sustainable-cement-geopolymer/

Sustainable Cement

Making cement sustainable

From Techxplore.com by Andy Fell, UC Davis October 17, 2018

Cement production accounts for up to nine percent of global anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions, according to the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. Sabbie Miller, assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, aims to change that by finding alternative ways to make cement or replace it altogether.

People have been using cement as a building material for thousands of years. Mixed with water and rock fragments, it forms concrete for buildings, highways and bridges.

Making cement involves heating limestone and clay to 1450°C (2640°F), which both consumes energy and releases carbon dioxide. The process also requires large amounts of fresh water. Yet the reason cement plays such a major role in carbon dioxide emissions comes down to the sheer amount of concrete being poured worldwide.

“It’s a reflection of society changing and the building of more infrastructure,” Miller said.

Miller, who serves on the sustainability committee of the American Concrete Institute, focuses her research on three areas: Alternative materials to conventional cement, ways to replace or reduce the amount of cement in concrete, and engineering approaches that target desired mitigation strategies for reducing environmental impacts of cement and concrete.

“I’ve found that structural design and material engineering rarely meet paths – if the structural engineer says I need a 25 MegaPascal (standard) concrete, no one ever says can I redesign the structure so I can get away with less, but higher-strength concrete,” she said.

One recent study by Miller and colleagues published in Nature Materials describes how the field of sustainable research is evolving; small changes with readily implementable methods could dramatically cut worldwide greenhouse gas emissions from concrete production by about 20 percent, she argues. Miller has also explored less commonly considered environmental impacts in the production of concrete, such as water demand, and has shown that the production of this one material is resulting in about 20 percent of global industrial water consumption.

There is a wide range of alternative materials that could be used to make cement with less energy, or to replace cement in concrete. Miller wants to know how these alternatives affect the structural and thermal properties of concrete and cement. How do they compare to conventional materials? How long will they last and what happens when they break down? What raw materials are needed to produce them and what impact does that production have on the environment?

For some applications, it might be possible to use less of an alternative material and still reduce environmental impacts by improving the overall strength and durability of a structure.

“Longevity could reduce demand for materials associated with replacement and maintenance,” Miller said.

With no slacking in global demand for concrete, there is plenty of scope for lessening the impact on raw materials, energy use, water demand, and carbon dioxide emissions.

“It’s the very edge of an ocean of research,” Miller said.

New Post has been published on http://www.deepgreenfutures.com/2018/10/28/3d-printed-construction-disrupt-construction-industry/

3D-Printed Construction On Track to Disrupt Construction Industry

3D printing of concrete to disrupt construction industry

From OpenGovAsia.com by Teresa Umali Oct. 19, 2018

Construction remains a largely manual work, which makes it very expensive. Construction is open to being disrupted by automation, and 3D printing is one technology that can help. Two approaches were explored, the powder bed 3D printing option and the onsite concrete printing.

There are many sectors of industry being shaken up by the transformative technology of 3D printing but it is nothing compared to the disruption that is coming to construction.

According to a recent report, collaboration worth A$ 1.3 million among seven Australian universities is being led by the Swinburne University of Technology to develop 3D printing of concrete.

Construction remains a largely manual work, which makes it very expensive. It also makes the global need for housing and infrastructure very hard to meet.

Construction is open to being disrupted by automation, and 3D printing is one technology that can help.

3D-Printed Construction

Although 3D printers are commercially available for manufacturing, there are significant differences between printing aeroplane parts and printing a house.

It needs to be printed out in the weather instead of printing in factory conditions,

Tonnes of materials need to be handled rather than just a few kilos. And although there is no need for the same accuracy as the aerospace industry, that has to be traded for low cost.

Two approaches were explored to address the challenges. The interim option is to ‘powder bed’ 3D printing.

This means that the printer spreads a thin layer of concrete powder, then prints a water-based ‘ink’ that sets the concrete where the ink is applied.

The process is repeated layer by layer. The challenge here was to automate the collection and reuse of the vast quantities of unreacted powder that each print run generated.

Powder bed was a good option for forming precast sections of a building in a factory. Intricate structures can be made but it was not a process that can be done out in the wind and rain.

For onsite concrete printing, a machine is needed that extrudes liquid concrete. And the main issue here is the concrete itself.

The concrete must remain liquid inside the printer, but set as soon as it is printed to retain its shape in order for the next layer to be applied.

Traditional concrete does not behave this way. Currently, the most common approach is to heavily dose the concrete with chemical retardants that keep it liquid and then heavily dose it with accelerators as it is extruded.

But this approach compromises the mechanical properties of the finished product.

New types of cement are being made that have these properties intrinsically:

Although the details cannot be disclosed yet, one option is to use geopolymer cement, which is a material made from an industrial waste called fly ash.

Architects already design everything by computer so instead of printing their plans out on paper, the ultimate dream may be achieved with 3D printing.

Just press the button and the machine will start building the design.

3D-Printed Construction

Pic Credit : Swinburne University of Technology