Ceramic waste powder as an ingredient to sustainable concrete

Concrete industry plays a major role in sustainable development. Several industrial solid wastes have properties which suits concrete; the most popular ones are blast furnace slag, fly ash and silica fume which are currently used as supplementary cementitious materials (SCM) in concrete and are common in today’s concrete industry. The use of SCM in concrete has twofold advantages; first is clear and immediate environmental benefit of using a material that was once a landfill and second reducing some negative effects of cement production mainly high energy consumption and emission of greenhouse gas. Therefore, there are potentials to increase the solid waste recycling by investigating the possibility to use other industrial solid wastes in concrete production. Ceramic waste powder (CWP) is produced during the polishing process of ceramic tiles and then dumped in landfills can cause soil, air and groundwater pollution leading to a serious environmental problem. Utilization of CWP will help to protect the environment, achieve sustainable development and become a cheaper but almost equivalent to other SCM already used in the concrete industry. In this study CWP is investigated as an alternative ingredient in making concrete as SCM. The study focuses on studying the properties of fresh and hardened concrete mixtures (i.e. slump, slump loss, compressive strength and drying shrinkage) besides the durability features as evaluated from the RCPT test for concrete mixtures incorporating CWP as SCM with different weight replacement levels (10-20-30-40%). It is found that CWP improves slump retention, moderately increases setting time and compressive strength. CWP can be utilized effectively as SCM in concrete which will result in an effective way for solid waste management and sustainable development.