Developing a Sustainable Concrete using Ceramic Waste Powder

The change from a traditional utilization based society to a sustainable society is urgently needed because of the contamination of the natural environment, the depletion of the natural resources and the reduced capacity of the final waste disposal arrangements. Concrete is regarded as an advanced and major construction material which needs continuous innovation and improvement to reduce environmental impact. In the future, the demand for concrete will be increasing with the increase in population. This article presents an experimental study of using ceramic waste as a limited replacement with cement in structural concrete. Ceramic waste deposit, on one side, poses a number of environmental challenges, ranging from air, water and soil contaminations but on another side, it has cementitious properties. Concrete mixtures with different percentage of ceramic waste powder were produced, tested and compared in terms of compressive strength. As a result, the maximum compressive strength achieved with a 30% ceramic waste. The purpose of this study was to examine the performance of cement concrete with different percentage of ceramic waste powder, it needs to be noted that such performance may be varied when the grade of cement or chemical composition of ceramic waste powder will be changed. The long-run performance (after 28 days) of such concrete and especially when used with reinforcement need to be investigated further.