Use of Plastic Waste (High Density Polyethylene) in Concrete Mixture as Aggregate Replacement

Abstract

Rapid industrial development causes serious problem all over the world such as depletion of natural aggregates and creates enormous amount of waste material from construction and demolition activities. Quantities of polymer wastes also have been increased these recent years due to the boost in industrialization and the rapid improvement in the standard of living. In Malaysia, most of polymer wastes is abandoned and not recycled. This situation causes serious problems such as wastage of natural resources and environmental pollution. Polymer products such as synthetic fibers, plastics and rubber belong to petrochemical compound and not easily biodegradable even after a long period. One of the ways to reduce this problem is to utilize waste materials in the production of concrete. Use of these materials not only helps in getting them utilize in cement, sand, aggregate, concrete and other construction materials, it helps in reducing the cost of concrete manufacturing, but also has numerous indirect benefits such as reduction in land-fill cost, saving in energy and protecting the environment from possible pollution effects. An experimental research is made on the utilization of plastic waste, High Density Polyethylene (HDPE) as coarse aggregates in concrete with a percentage replacement of 10 %, 20 % and 30 %. The laboratory tests include slump test, compressive strength and water absorption were conducted in this research. The samples content 10 % of HDPE has better performance in term of strength.

Influence of Using Waste Plastic and/or Recycled Rubber as Coarse Aggregates on the Performance of Pervious Concrete

“…These results agree with what other researchers reported [35,36,41,55,56]. This decrease could be due to the weak pond between the plastic aggregate and the cement paste since the plastic has a smooth surface which weakens the interfacial transition zone [37,39]. Moreover, plastic is a kind of hydrophobic material (which makes it water-repelling) and this may limit the water required for cement hydration from entering through the structure [44].…”

Mechanical properties of concrete reinforced with recycled HDPE plastic fibres

“…The two directions that emerged in practice and research are utilisation of the raw plastic granulate as partial substitute for sand aggregate [1][2][3][4][5] whereby concrete is used as a medium for disposal of polymer waste (in the amounts that do not significantly affect its strength) and the other is the use of processed resins for production of polymer concrete [6,7]. However, knowing that concrete reinforced with commercially available steel or poly-propylene (PP) fibres is a more resilient building material than plain concrete [8,9], another promising option is recycling of plastic for production of fibres to be used as secondary reinforcement for concrete along the traditional steel rebars.…”

Recycling wind turbine blade composite material as aggregate in concrete

“…Using recycled material as aggregate in pavement construction reduces the need for virgin or natural aggregates, preserves the environment, and saves landfill space [27]. A key advantage to using waste or recycled materials such as plastics or composite material in concrete is to help reduce the solid wastes being landfilled [28]. The results of previous studies showed that recycled materials (other than the composite material from wind turbine blades) can be incorporated into concrete without detrimental effects [29].…”