Abstract
Concrete is the most used construction material, but it is generally considered impossible to truly recycle and it has high embodied CO2 content. To make concrete more sustainable, we must lower the CO2 emissions associated with cement (cement production currently emits at least 5% of anthropogenic CO2), and develop a way to truly recycle waste concrete back into cementitious material in support of a circular economy. In an attempt to recycle waste concrete for re-use as cement, a process was developed to convert concrete into a glassy cementitious reagent. This paper presents some preliminary performance results using this reagent as a supplementary cementitious material (SCM) in ordinary Portland cement (OPC) mixes, and as a primary reagent in geopolymer cement. Setting times, compressive strength, acid corrosion, and heat resistance were tested. In conclusion, waste concrete can be converted into a glassy cementitious reagent with lower anticipated CO2 impact than OPC; this can be used as a primary reagent in geopolymer cement and as SCM in blended OPC. More detailed work is needed to develop, evaluate, and standardize this promising technique before commercial application. Nonetheless, this proof-of-concept is an important step toward low-CO2 cement and a circular economy for concrete.
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Compressive strength tests performed by Metro Testing and Engineering are gratefully acknowledged. Thank you to Tiera Naber for laboratory assistance.
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Lake, D.J. (2020). Making Cement from Demolished Concrete: A Potential Circular Economy Through Geopolymer Chemistry. In: Moore, J., Attia, S., Abdel-Kader, A., Narasimhan, A. (eds) Ecocities Now. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58399-6_7
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