ENHANCING THE USAGE OF CALCAREOUS FLY-ASH AS A CEMENT

REPLACEMENT THROUGH MECHANICAL PROCESSING

Fly Ash is a byproduct of coal combustion. It is widely used as a supplementary cementitious material
that improve late-age strength, workability and durability of concrete. This paper investigates the
effect of mechanical processing of calcareous fly ash, used as partial substitute for cement, on the
performance of cement composites. Reference mixture without fly ash and four mixtures with 30 wt.
% of fly ash as a cement replacement were investigated. Mixtures with fly ash were prepared with
raw fly ash, sieved fly ash, fly ash intergrinded with cement and separately grinded fly ash. Setting
time, standard consistency, soundness, flexural and compressive strength of mixtures were tested,
and it was concluded that mechanical preparation of fly ash has excessive influence on its
effectiveness as supplementary cementitious material.

Key words: by product, fly ash, sieving, grinding, mechanical processing, cement replacement

POVEĆANJE EFIKASNOSTI KALCIJSKOG LETEĆEG PEPELA KAO ZAMJENE ZA

CEMENT MEHANIČKOM PRERADOM

Leteći pepeo je nus-proizvod koji nastaje sagorijevanjem uglja. Koristi se kao dodatak
cementima i cementnim kompozitima, te poboljšava obradivost, povećava kasne čvrstoće i
trajnost cementnih kompozita. U ovom radu istraživan je utjecaj mehaničke prerade
kalcijskog letećeg pepela na svojstva cementnih kompozita. Pripremljena je refrentna
mješavina bez letećeg pepela, te četiri mješavine u kojima je izvršena zamjena 30 mas. %
cementa letećim pepelom. Mješavine sa letećim pepelom su pripremljene sa netretiranim
letećim pepelom, sa prosijanim pepelom, sa pepelom samljevenim zajedno sa cementom i sa
posebno samljevenim pepelom. Ispitana je standardna konzistencija, vrijeme vezivanja,
postojanost volumena, savojna i pritisna čvrstoća, te je zaključeno da mehanička priprema
ima veliki utjecaj na svojstva cementnih kompozita.

Ključne riječi: nus-proizvodi, leteći pepeo, prosijavanje, mljevenje, mehanička prerada,

zamjena za cement
 1. INTRODUCTION

Fly is a by-product from coal-burning process in power plants. Fly ash has been used in the
construction industry for decades as a replacement for ordinary portland cement (OPC), that
causes not only a reduction in the consumption of natural resources, fossil fuel and in the gas
emissions, but can also contribute to better concrete properties in both fresh and hardened
state.
Today’s requirements to fly ash for use in Danish concrete are given in DS/EN 450-1, 2012 “Fly as for
concrete – Part 1: Definitions, specifications and conformity criteria”. Selected requirements are
summarized in Table 1.

According to DS 2426–EN 206-1:2011 is fly ash for concrete to comply with requirements to
category A for loss on ignition and category N for requirements to fineness.
Table 1 – Selected chemical and physical requirements to fly as for use in concrete according to
DS/EN 450-1, 2012. Reference is given to the standard for methods of testing.
2.1. Materials
2.1.1. Cement
To investigate upon the response of strength improvement and workability, one grade of
cement as defined in
Indian Standard (IS) was used namely ordinary Portland cement OPC 43 grade conforming
to IS: 8112:1989 (2005) and ASTM Type 1 specifications. The mean particle diameter of
cement is 17 lm which is determined by laser based Time of Transition method using
Ankersmid CIS-50 particle size analyser. The physical and chemical composition of
cement is given in Tables 1 and 2.
2.1.2. Sand
Natural river sand owing to their rounded shape was used in this work as it ensures better
packing characteristics than the crushed sand. Locally available two types of river sand
having the fineness modulus values of 2.66 and 2.08 were mixed in the proportion of 70%
and 30% respectively so as to obtain packing density value of 0.61. The grading of sand
satisfies the Indian standard IS: 383-1970 (2002) and is given in Table 3.

2.1.3. Fly ash

Class F fly ash obtained from Dadri thermal power plant, India with a specific gravity of
2.13 was used. The
mean particle diameter of fly ash is 12 lm which is also determined by laser based Time
of Transition method
using Ankersmid CIS-50 particle size analyser. The particle size distribution of the fly ash
and its chemical compositions are given in Fig. 1 and Table 4. It satisfies the Indian
standard IS: 3812-1981 (1999).