Utilisation of crushed floor and wall tile wastes as aggregate in concrete production

Industrial wastes are often used as aggregate in concrete production to lower their production cost. Large quantities of tiles are discarded during the tile production in the ceramic factories due to substandard and low quality production. The tile waste can reach up to 7% of the total tile production in the ceramic tile sector. At present, the tile wastes are not used for any purposes in Turkey, they are continuously stored at waste dumps. Studies are carried out to determine the possibility of using the tile waste as aggregates in concrete production to decrease the production cost and also to minimise the environmental impact of tile wastes. Properties of tile made concretes are compared with the properties of the concrete made using the limestone aggregates. The concrete made using the crushed floor tile aggregates have been found to have similar mechanical properties with that of the limestone concrete, on the other hand the concretes made with the wall tile aggregates have given lower mechanical properties than the limestone concrete. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.