Effects of diatomaceous earth mixing amount on the performance of curing materials for waste leachate treatment

Abstract

With cement as a cementitious material, fly ash, diatomaceous earth, sugar filter mud, and river sand as materials, and waste leachate instead of water, orthogonal experiments were designed to derive the preliminary formulation of curing materials and to explore the effect of different diatomaceous earth mixing amount on the performance of curing material test blocks. The experimental results showed that as the amount of diatomaceous earth increased from 12.5% to 13.58%, the 28d compressive strength of the cured material test block decreased from 9.85 MPa to 7.35 MPa, the dry density decreased from 1012 kg/m3 to 912 kg/m3, the porosity of the test block increased from 18.94% to 23.34% and the water absorption increased from 43.91% to 66.36%. Comparison of the best formulation of curing materials selected for cement, fly ash, diatomaceous earth and sugar filter mud mass ratio of 31.09 wt.%, 51.82 wt.%, 12.94 wt.%, 4.15 wt.%, external mixing river sand 15 wt.%, with a water–solid ratio of 0.8 was added to the waste leachate to prepare the curing material test blocks.