Experimental Study on Utilization of Organic Waste Ash (OWA) and Wood Ash (WA) in Concrete

In many of third world countries, organic wastes have one of the main rations of total produced wastes, yet recycling programs are concentrated on the metal and plastic materials due to their high prices. By using residual of the combustion of organic wastes instead of cement, due to the rising price of cement, an immense improvement in these areas could be obtained in construction industry by lowering the final costs. Also it will reduce environmental pollution by reusing the solid wastes, instead of landfilling them which will produce greenhouse gases, such as methane. This paper contains an experimental study on the effects of using 5, 8 and 12 percent of OWA (containing waste wood ash and animal waste ash) instead of cement by weight in comparison to the same amounts of WA on the slump, compressive strength, tensile splitting strength and flexural strength of concrete. Results showed that organic waste won’t cause severe long-term threats on the mechanical properties of concrete and 5 percent of OWA instead of cement by weight is the optimum amount.

Keywords:

organic waste ash , concrete , slump , mechanical properties