Recycling of concrete waste with wood waste through heating compaction

Abstract: Concrete, as primary building material, is widely used in most construction project. For this reason, large amounts of concrete waste were generated from construction and demolition. One way to reuse concrete waste is to use it as backfill material for landfilling and road bases. While the demand for backfill material is decreasing as the basic infrastructure construction gradually completes. Another way to reuse concrete waste is to grind it and use it as aggregate in casting new concrete. However, the reuse as aggregate for casting concrete requires large amount of cement. It is unsustainable because the production of cement causes significant amounts of carbon dioxide emission. How to deal with the concrete waste in a sustainable way is presently an urgent issue. Powder compaction is a new approach to completely recycle concrete waste in an environmentally friendly way. This new method was studied in the Sakai lab of the Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo. The process consists of crushing and milling concrete waste into a fine powder, filling the powder into moulds and compacting it under high pressure. By this process concrete waste powder can be turned into a solid concrete with mechanical properties so that it has potentials to be used again as a building material. Data from previous studies show that the compacted concrete waste can reach strength for construction but the required compaction pressure is quite high. Wood flour can be added in compaction for improving tensile strength and reducing compaction pressure. Lignin is a wood substance that melts under high temperature, fills gaps and improves bonding between particles. Cellulose from the wood substance functions as fibres which improves tensile strength. Wood waste from production of timber building materials, furniture and other wooden products also forms a larger quantities. Recycling of concrete waste with wooden waste through heating compaction is a potentially sustainable method. This Master thesis presents research on the effect from different production conditions on the bending strength of recycled concrete waste with wood waste through heating compaction. The condition factors studied were compaction duration, compaction pressure, concrete proportion, mixture percentage, temperature and particle size of wood flour. To enhance the water resistance of this recycled product, different water resistance treatments were discussed theoretically. The independence of production condition factors was analysed using a statistic method. Results indicated that within a certain range, an increase in compaction duration, compaction pressure, the percentage of wood waste and temperature improves the bending strength of the recycled products. Using smaller particle size of wood flour cannot improve compaction but contribute to give higher bending strength. The mechanical properties of these recycled products suggest application as non-bearing building material, such as decoration tiles and bricks for partition walls. The application as a structural material is expected in the future as improvement treatments are discovered.