Influences of recycled plastic and treated wastewater containing with 50% GGBS content in sustainable concrete mixes

Environmental sources are diminishing every day and hence, usage of available sources become even more important. The novelty of this research reports the experimental ex-amination of applying Recycled Plastic (RP), Treated Wastewater (TW) and GGBS in con-crete. Four groups of mixes were developed (Groups NW, TW, NWG, and TWG) with each group consisting of four mixes, providing a total of 16 mixes. Group NW: 100% Natural Water (NW) with different percent ratio of RP contents Group TW: 100% Treated waste-water (TW) with different percent ratio of RP contents Group NWG: 100% Natural Water (NW) and 50% GGBS (replacement with Portland cement [PC]) with different percent ratio of RP contents Group TWG: 100% TW and 50% GGBS (replacement with PC) with different percent ratio of RP contents. Scientific contribution to the knowledge is using recycled plastic material, treated waste water and 50% GGBS simultaneously in the concrete mix. The experiments performed to compare Fresh (Compaction Factor and Slump tests), Hardened (compressive -cube & cylinder, flexural-beam strengths) and thermal proper-ties (density & thermal conductivity). Results indicate as the plastic ratio increases, the workability of the concrete, decreases (reduction range 5-50% in all groups). In addition, the compressive strength values decrease as the amount of recycled plastic increases. Specifically when 50% RP content is used, mixed were affected more in all groups where the mean strength is between 10 and 30 MPa. On the other hand, 50% RP content decreases the density and it was also determined that 100% treated waste water content affected the concrete properties less than RP content in the mix. However, 50% GGBS content did not show a positive effect on the results obtained which may due to a limitation of observing up to 28-day curing age. Finally, it can be recommended to use waste materials with lower thermal conductivity because it supplies thermal comfort for the occupants. (c) 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Automated summary

The experimental examination of using recycled plastic, treated wastewater, and 50% GGBS in concrete shows that increasing recycled plastic content decreases concrete workability and compressive strength.