Investigating Amorphous Composition Mix Design Performance and Properties of Fly Ash-Based Geopolymer
Identifying viable replacement for Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) is part of the effort to limit CO2 emission during its production. Fly ash-based geopolymer composites have emerged as a sustainable and promising replacement product with proven comparable binding properties, coupled with superior...
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Journal Article |
| Published: |
E J S E International Ltd.
2017
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| Online Access: | http://www.ejse.org/ http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/70250 |
| Summary: | Identifying viable replacement for Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) is part of the effort to limit
CO2 emission during its production. Fly ash-based geopolymer composites have emerged as a sustainable and
promising replacement product with proven comparable binding properties, coupled with superior
characteristic in some area, when compared to OPC. However, fly ash being a by-product of coal combustion,
remains unfavourable in industry application due to its deferring composition dependent on the type of coal
feedstock, resulted in inconsistent mechanical and chemical properties produced. In order to overcome this
shortcoming, a unified method to evaluate fly ash at the amorphous composition level is required. This study
aims to tackle this challenge by establishing a framework to effectively identify relationship among the fly ash
amorphous content and identifying an optimum proportion of alkaline activator in order to optimise its full
potential in geopolymer concrete or mortar production. This is achieved by utilising XRF and Q-XRD analyses
on geopolymer specimen’s amorphous compositions and evaluate their respective compressive strength
through laboratory testing. A number of testing variants are carried out including curing regime, alkaline
activator concentrations, presence of mechanical activation and deferring water content are investigated. |
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