Experimental investigations on the performance of concrete containing surface modified novel pet waste coarse aggregate

Abstract

Concrete is considered to be one of the mostly used materials in the newlineWorld, next to water. Also, it is noted that, plastic has found a place almost in our newlinedaily household activities from water bottles to food packages. Usage of these two newlinewidely used materials (concrete and plastic) causes different negative effects on newlinethe environment. Concrete requires huge volumes of natural resources for newlineobtaining raw materials for cement production and aggregates and causes newlinedegradation of green environment. Use of plastic products end up in generating newlinehuge volumes of non-degradable waste that are mostly dumped on vacant lands. newlineCentre for Science and Environment has reported (CSE, 2020) that India is newlinegenerating nearly 9200 metric tonnes of plastic waste per day, and this contributes newlineto about 5-6% of total solid waste generated. It is also noted that strict orders are newlinebeing enforced by the Government regarding quarrying of natural resources to get newlinefine and coarse aggregates. In this regard, manufactured aggregates (m-sand) are newlinebeing used in the recent days. Quarrying of natural resources for cement newlineproduction and obtaining aggregates for concrete production also leads newlineenvironmental degradation. In order to curtail environmental degradation due to newlinequarrying and at the same time reduce dumping of plastic waste accumulation, newlinethere is an urgent need to find a suitable solution. newlineLiterature review indicated that studies on synthetic aggregates newlineproduced by using plastic wastes are limited except for the studies reported by newlineAlqahtani and Zafar (2020); Castillo et al. (2020) and Coppola et al. (2016). Only newlinea very few researchers have tried modifying the surface conditions of plastic newlineaggregate for achieving better bonding properties with the adjoining cement newlinematrix newline