Recycling of Fly Ash as an Energy Efficient Building Material: A Sustainable Approach

Abstract

Fly Ash, known for its proven stability for variety of applications as admixture in cement, concrete, mortar, lime pozzolan mixture (bricks. blocks) etc, is an industrial by-product from Thermal Power Plants with current annual generation of approximately 108 million tones. Fly Ash is not just environment friendly, but is known for its cost effectiveness as well. Its use as a building material helps increase buildings strength and stability. Fly Ash is believed to be a very promising alternative for the industry seeking to meet its development objectives. Fly Ash is being very effectively and economically used in building components such as bricks, doors, door-frames, etc. Fly Ash is also being used in construction of roads and embankments with some design changes. It is also used as raw material in agricultural and wasteland development programmes. The trend is clear, Fly Ash will soon be considered as a resource material and its potential will be fully exploited. Through development & application of technologies, Fly Ash has shifted from “Waste Material” category to “Resource Material” category. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of disposal and utilization of Fly Ash and its beneficial potential in application of civil engineering construction as well as others. The focus of this paper is to explore the properties of fly ash as building materials and also aims at the properties of geopolymer concrete, how these distinguish from general characteristics of ordinary Portland cement. It also lay emphasize on durability, properties of fly ash based geopolymer concrete and its advantage when used as a construction material as well.