Production of high-strength lightweight concrete using waste lightweight oil-palm-boiler-clinker and limestone powder

Abstract

Oil-palm-boiler clinker (OPBC) is an agricultural solid waste from the incineration process of solid wastes in palm oil industry. The OPBC that is highly porous and lightweight in nature is suitable to be used as a lightweight aggregate. This paper presents a method to produce high-strength lightweight aggregate concrete using OPBC. The workability, density, cube compressive strength in different curing conditions, splitting tensile strength, modulus of elasticity and water absorption were measured. Test results showed that a high-strength lightweight aggregate concrete with the 28-day compressive strength in the range of 50–60 MPa with an oven dry density of 1875–1995 kg/m³ could be produced. OPBC high-strength lightweight concrete under air-drying condition showed equivalent compressive strength compared to full water curing condition, showing that OPBC lightweight concrete is not sensitive to the lack of curing. The initial water absorption test result showed that OPBC high-strength lightweight concrete can be categorised as good concrete.

Keyword:

• oil-palm-boiler clinker
• lightweight aggregate
• high-strength lightweight concrete
• limestone powder
• solid waste

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support from University of Malaya under the University Malaya Research Fund Assistance (BKP), grant number BK055-2014.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.