Effects of Modified Waste Polystyrene Aggregate (MEPS) on the Physical Properties of Light Weight concrete

Abstract

With growing population, industrialization, urbanization and globalization it is clearthat there will be a corresponding growth in the air, water and land pollution. Because increasing wealth and population mean increasing of the number of the consumer and demand of the buying more products and ultimately creating more waste. To meet the demand bring about new lifestyle, such as eating fast food, and new packaging and technological products,much of these contain materials that are not biodegradable. Recycling of these materials isone of the best ways to overcome the pollution problem and have a positive impact on the world in which we live. Production of concrete from raw materials are more expensive andboth non-environmentally friendly and sustainable. Shortly, we can no longer continue toignore the pollution problems on the one hand and the unrestricted depletion of naturalresources on the other hand.Because of the above reasons waste expanded polystyrene was studied. Expandedpolystyrene (EPS) is a polymeric material that can be used as artificial aggregates afterthermally modification process. Thermally modified waste EPS is abbreviated as MEPS. Thestudy covers the use of MEPS as lightweight aggregate in concrete. MEPS were used insteadof natural aggregate at 0%, 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% on the volume basis. Studiedparameters are thermal conductivity (TC) and drying shrinkage. The TC of MEPS concretedecreased with increasing of MEPS aggregate in the mixes. Maximum reduction in the TCobserved at 100% MEPS replacement of natural aggregate and the reduction value was 275%.The average drying shrinkage after 210-d of exposure to the ambient condition was 2.59x10-3for mix contained 25% natural aggregate, samples (type C6); while it was 5.08x10-3 for 100%MEPS concrete samples (C1).