Palm oil fuel ash obtained from palm oil mill was treated via screening, grinding and heating to improve its pozzolanic reactivity. The characteristics of the palm oil fuel ash before and after treatment were monitored to assess the changes in the properties of the palm oil fuel ash. The resulting ultrafine palm oil fuel ash was then utilized to produce high strength concrete by replacing the ordinary Portland cement at 0, 20, 40 and 60% on mass-for-mass basis. The results show that the treatment process undertaken reduces the particle size, diminishes the unburned carbon content, while at the same time increases the glassy phases. The utilization of the ultrafine palm oil fuel ash in high strength concrete was observed to improve workability especially at higher ultrafine palm oil fuel ash content. In addition, the long-term compressive strength of the high strength concrete was significantly increased with the ultrafine palm oil fuel ash inclusion. Further, the long-term rapid chloride permeability was significant reduced especially at higher ultrafine palm oil fuel ash content of 60%, which could be translated into superior durability performance.
Palm oil fuel ash (POFA) was used to produce engineered cementitious composite (ECC) in this research where ECC mixtures containing different volume of POFA (up to 55% by weight) of cement, were prepared. Mechanical properties of the resulting ECC mixtures were assessed using the compression, flexural and uniaxial tensile tests. The findings of the study show that the use of POFA improves the mechanical properties of the ECCs. The ECC mix with 1.2 POFA/cement ratio achieved a compressive strength of 30 MPa at 28 days, which is within the normal range of concrete strength for many applications. Moreover, the results portray that the use of POFA should be helpful for achieving strain-hardening behaviour. The increase in the POFA content concomitantly increased the flexural deflection and tensile strain capacities of the POFA-ECC. Furthermore, crack width of the ECC was significantly decreased with an increase of POFA content. In addition, the resulting POFA-ECC is expected to enhance the material greenness and durability.
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