The effect of recycled plastic waste polyethylene terephthalate (PET) on characteristics of cement mortar

Abstract

Abstract This paper studied the effect of waste Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) on the workability and mechanical properties of the produced cement based mortar. However, five different waste PET weight fractions of 0, 5, 15, 25 and 50% were replaced with river sand in cement mortar mixtures with constant cement content and water to cement ratio of 525 kg/m3 and 0.48, respectively. The workability of the mixtures is enhanced by increasing the replacement level of plastic waste PET. On the other hand, the dry density, compressive and flexural strengths were reduced as waste PET incorporation increased except the mix contained 5% of PET which improved the compressive and flexural strengths. As a result of the dry density and compressive strength results, it was determined that the mixture containing 25% waste PET is considered as a lightweight mortar and suitable for structural purposes.