NATURAL AND SEWAGE SLUDGE AGGREGATES PERFORMANCE WITH ECO-CEMENT AND ORDINARY CEMENT IN CONCRETE MIXES

Accordingly the time passes, the industries are taking conscience about the optimization of the resources to preserve the natural sites. At this moment, the cement and concrete industries are generating a huge negative environmental impact with the extraction of natural resources and the pollution generated from its production. Recently, these industries have increased its contribution to the sustainable development, utilizing raw materials considered wastes. Therefore, it is necessary to study these waste materials to increase its usage, diversity and reduce its production cost. This research deals with the use of sewage sludge molten slag aggregate. This aggregate is produced at the lakeshore of Lake Biwa (the largest lake in Japan) and it avoids the pollution of the lake separating the solid waste from the drainage and the landfill of this sludge. The used binder is Eco-cement which is produced majorly from incinerated municipal waste. Additionally, some other concrete mixes were produced with natural aggregates and ordinary Portland cement to compare the Eco-concretes performance with those considered common concretes. The strength, elasticity, fracture energy, and drying shrinkage tests show similar or better performance for the Eco-concretes demonstrating that these mixes can be used in any type of construction.