Studies on Glass Powder as Partial Replacement of Cement in Concrete Production

Cement manufacturing industry is one of the carbon dioxide emitting sources besides deforestation and burning of fossil fuels. The global warming is caused by the emission of green house gases, such as CO2, to the atmosphere. Among the greenhouse gases,CO2 contributes about 65% of global warming. The global cement industry contributes about 7% of greenhouse gas emission to the earth’s atmosphere. In order to address environmental effects associated with cement manufacturing, there is a need to develop alternative binders to make concrete. Consequently extensive research is on going into the use of cement replacements, using many waste materials and industrial by products. Efforts have been made in the concrete industry to use waste glass as partial replacement of coarse or fine aggregates and cement. In this study, finely powdered waste glasses are used as a partial replacement of cement in concrete and compared it with conventional concrete. This work examines the possibility of using Glass powder as a partial replacement of cement for new concrete. Glass powder was partially replaced as 10%, 20%, 30% and 40% and tested for its compressive, Tensile and flexural strength up to 60 days of age and were compared with those of conventional concrete; from the results obtained , it is found that glass powder can be used as cement replacement material upto particle size less than 75μm to prevent alkali silica reaction.