EVALUATION OF SUITABILITY TO USE PLASTIC WASTE IN CONCRETE PRODUCTION

Abstract

Nowadays one of the main tasks of environmental protection is the management and recycling of plastic waste. Plastic occupy the major part of all public waste and with this material is polluted all earth. In natural condition plastic decompose in 400 or even in 500 years. Therefore, it is important to solve this problem reusing plastic waste. One of the possible areas is construction industry. In the present paper were estimated how plastic waste impact the properties of concrete. During the research the part of coarse aggregates were changed with polyethylene (PE) pellets and cut polypropylene (PP) particles. The change of fresh concrete density, workability and hardened concrete density, compression strength, water absorbability were evaluated. The results show, that plastic waste has a positive effect on fresh concrete properties: the concrete become more workable and lighter. Unfortunately, on the main hardened concrete properties the increase plastic waste amount has the negative effect: the compression strength was decreasing and the water absorbability was increasing. However, generalizing all results, can be stated, that keeping the same level of concrete workability there are possibilities to reduce water and cement ratio and it will give strength loss and water absorbability growth compensation.

Keywords: aggregates, compression strength, concrete, plastic waste, water absorbability, workability

Article DOI: http://doi.org/10.15544/RD.2017.024