Utilisation of wood ash for environmentally friendly concrete production

Abstract

Portland cement (OPC) production is responsible approximately 5% to global CO2 emissions which is one the greenhouse gases that contributes global warming the most. The aim of cement stakeholders is to use waste products as an alternative to OPC in order to improve sustainability credentials of concrete production. Against this background, wood ash (WA) use as a replacement to OPC was considered to be an alternative approach for environmentally concrete production. Reported work carried out to evaluate the use of WA use as a partial replacement to OPC. In the light of these, OPC was replaced by WA with replacement levels of 5% and 12.5% for the production of C35 concrete strength class. Results showed that WA incorporation resulted in lower performances as WA replacement level increased. However, 5% WA incorporated concrete mix achieved similar results compared to control mix. The results also indicate promising performances for longer ages.