Sustainable practices of concrete manufacturing

Abstract

Construction using eco-friendly, recycled or bio-materials sustainably is the way to reduce carbon footprint, natural resource depletion, which is vital for our well-being and further development of humanity. It is well known, that reinforced concrete is one of the most preferable construction materials in the many areas of application. At the same time, concrete manufacturing, Portland cement specifically, turned out to be the most polluting process with enormous amounts of CO2 emission resulting in some environmental issues known as global warming or the greenhouse effect. To go green and minimize the issues mentioned above, the shift of our habitual concrete manufacturing practices toward more sustainable and ecologically friendly is required. The efforts of scientists all over the World to reduce CO2 emission and resource consumption while concrete production resulted in bio- and green concrete appearance. The idea of bio-concrete (or self-healing concrete) relies on the biomimicry concept of cement manufacturing through the adaptation of natural elements, models, patterns and systems for human problem solvation. Thus, the potential of the surrounding microbiome (germs and microbes) for concrete self-healing, particularly, for CaCO3 reproduction when cracking starts to accrue was established. The idea of green concrete is quite different and mainly relies on the substitution of conventional portlandite with other supplementary cementitious material such as ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBFS), fly ash (FA), or pozzolanic one known as silica fume (SF) as well as metakaolin (MK). This paper provides a comprehensive overview of impact of sustainable construction materials for concrete production on its mechanical properties. It was shown, that the usage of GGBFS, FA, SF or MK incorporation as a partial replacement of ordinary Portland cement while concrete production improves its mechanical properties, particularly, compressive, tensile and flexural strength.