Recycling of Stone Cutting Waste In the Construction Sector: A Review

Abstract

Huge amounts of stone cutting waste are generated annually posing a heavy environmental load on nature and resulting in economic challenge to the plants' owners. The conducted researches in this field showed that stone, marble and granite waste could be reused in many applications. This paper aims to investigate the possible application of stone cutting waste in the construction sector. Review process includes investigation of the conducted researches, outcomes of the performed projects, and the impact of this waste on the characteristics of concrete compressive strength, flexural strength, splitting strength, concrete workability, bricks strength, terrazzo tile strength and soil properties. The results revealed that at suitable substitution ratio, this waste can increase the compressive strength of concrete up to 21%, the flexural strength by 33% and splitting strength by 4.3%. In contrast, the compressive strength of bricks decreased by up to 67% at replacement ratio of 100%, and the transverse strength of tiles decreased up to 18% at replacement ratio of 50%. Replacement of soil with stone cutting waste resulted in an improvement in the characteristics of cohesive and sandy soil. Concrete workability decreased significantly with replacement of normal aggregate with stone cutting waste. Such results buttressed the feasibility of reusing this material in the construction sector, which reduces the cost of storage and disposal, and creates a nonconventional income.