Towards Eco-Flowable Concrete Production

Abstract

Environmental concerns have increased due to the amount of unused/expired plastic medical waste generated in hospitals, laboratories, and other healthcare facilities, in addition to the fact that disposing of such wastes with extremely low degradation levels causes them to remain in the environment for extended periods of time. These issues have led researchers to develop more environmentally friendly alternatives for disposing of plastic medical waste in Australia. This study is an attempt to assess the impacts of using expired plastic syringes as fine aggregate on fresh and hardened characteristics of flowable concrete, which might provide a solution to environmental concerns. Six mixtures of flowable concrete with water-to-cement ratios of 0.38 were studied. It was found that using recycled aggregate in up to 20% can improve the workability and increase the V-funnel values of flowable concrete mixtures. However, using waste aggregates in more than 30% caused an inapt flowability. Adding waste aggregate at the 30%–50% replacement level led to a decrease in the L-box ratio. To verify the utility and the efficacy of this experiment, the connections between different rheological test measurements were also compared by implementing the Pearson correlation function. The mechanical properties of the mixes containing recycled aggregates were decreased at the age of seven days; however, at later ages, waste aggregates increased the strength at the 10%–30% replacement levels.