A new approach to the reuse of waste glass in the production of alkali-activated materials

The massive carbon footprint of cement manufacturing has provided great opportunities for research and development of eco-friendly alternative binders, geopolymers for instance. This research aims to maximise the waste uptake in the production of geopolymers by reusing glass waste as the auxiliary activator and fly ash/blast furnace slag blend as the aluminosilicate precursor. A filtration technique is utilised to assess the dissolution efficiency of glass waste powders in alkaline medium. The advantage of filtration compared with other methods includes its simplicity, accuracy, and availability to the research team. Compressive and flexural strength, X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy are conducted. The binders illustrated up to 28 MPa compressive strength, 3.4 MPa flexural strength, and 2.9 GPa Elastic modulus after 7 days implying competitive properties to those synthesised by silicate-contained activators. The weight loss after dissolution confirmed glass waste participation in the hardening mechanism and geopolymerisation reactions. The microstructure is also an analogy to the conventional binders resulting in the benefits of durability.