CRITIC REPORTS

RUBBERIZED CONCRETE (RUBCRETE)

A research made by Ali Raza Khalid and M. Haris Hameed, both came from Department
of Civil Engineering of different universities. The research is all about the use of ground and
scrap rubber as an addition or mix in Portland cement concrete. The goal is to collect knowledge
or information about the pros and cons of using rubber addition and assess the impacts of elastic
particle size on the intrinsic features of the resulting concrete with new and hardened state. They
use a two different types of rubber particle sample, crumb rubber and ground rubber. This rubber
were employs as replacement of coarse and fine aggregates at replacement stage 5%, 10%, till
40% replacement by weight. The researchers examine the workability, unit weight, air content,
toughness and strengthening properties of rubber concrete. Adding rubber has reduced the slump
and 40% replacement lead to zero slump, the mixture did not define fragile in any case rather a
flexible, plastic failure, and had the ability to understand a lot of plastic vitality under tensile and
compressive loads. The results of increment in the content of rubber in the mixture create a
decrease in slump, they noticed that when the rubber contents was 40% the slump was nearly
zero and the concrete is not feasible. Both mixes with the use of crumb and ground rubber, are
easily workable in fresh form and improved rheological properties, but the mixture containing
crumb rubber shows the better homogeneity and workable regardless of more slump lose at the
same replacement level compared to ground rubber mixture. Entrapping the air is need for better
control with crumb rubber mixture the slope of unit weight depletion noticed to decrease at
higher level replacement by crumb and ground rubber. After conducting tests, the result of
compressive strength decreases when the % age of the rubber increases, the increment in the
scrap rubber if reaches to 40% and kept a linear relationship in between increment of scrap or
ground rubber and reduction in compressive strength, displaying a loss/damage of about 75%
and 60% respectively. The linear forecast model it is predicted that 50% crumb rubber or 70%
ground rubber will lead to absolute loss of compressive strength at 28 days. They stated that
durability of both rubcrete mixes is higher than the control concrete mix.

Research of Cement mixtures with Additions of Industrial By-Products

This research is made by R. Papesch, L. Klus, J. Svoboda and R. Zajac, the main goal of their
research is the use of secondary energy products. The research use fly ashes, respectively steel
dusts as an additives for cement mixes. The researchers focused on physico-mechanical
characteristics of the fresh and solid mixture. Finding an appropriate formulations for grouting
works, highway construction feasibly rehabilitation of underground spaces or holes due to
mining activities. The main reason of the authors to this research is to find a way to use industrial
by-products in more creative and conservative way of using them, and also using this materials
can become a solution of reduce the use of natural resources such as aggregate and limestone.
The aim of this research is to verify the influence of secondary energy products and the relative
proportion of granular fly ashes, fluid fly ashes from the production of power plants and steel
plant dust, to the resulting rheological properties of the mixture. It was observed that the effect of
development of tensile strength and compressive strength in different times and after freeze-thaw
cycles. By relying on the acquired results, stating that it doesn’t required rapid increase of initial
strengths is possible to make cement mixes with up to 20% compensation of fine cement by a
suitable type of secondary energy products, also the compressive strength and tensile strength in
bending is not affected. Being this as substitute is possible to assume cost reduction in
comparison with reference mixture. Use of mixtures with high mentioned additions should
always be considered, especially according to place of use, conditions which affect location and
with properties wanted to be achieve.

A STUDY OF FREEZING BEHAVIOR OF CEMENTITIOUS MATERIALS BY

A research made by Qiang Zeng, Teddy Fen-Chong, Patrick Dangla and Kefei Li, they
study freezing behavior of cementitious materials by using poromechanical approach. The
material is taken as porous medium saturated with water and subject to freezing. In this research
thermodynamics, mass transfer and heat transfer processes are involved. The pore pressure
arising from freezing is converted to macroscopic effective stress through homogenization
scheme. The established model is applied to predict the macroscopic freezing strain of a
saturated cement paste and the theoretical prediction is compared to observed experimental
results. The results show that the poromechanical model can reasonably capture the freezing
behaviors from pore pressure accumulation, pore pressure relaxation as well as the thermal
shrinkage associated with the freezing process. The researchers concluded that thermoporoelastic
approach is used to define the freezing behavior of porous medium saturated with water and by
the numerical application to cement pastes in freezing, the numerical results reasonably agree
with the freezing strains measured in experiments.

A Life-Cycle Assessment of Portland Cement manufacturing: Comparing the Traditional

A research made by Deborah N. Huntzinger and Thomas Eatmon, they are concern over
the impact of anthropogenic carbon emissions on the global climate due to growth in global
warming awareness. According to their research, 5% of Global Carbon Dioxide emissions came
from cement manufacturing plants, the 3rd largest in United States. This research used LCA or
Life-Cycle Assessment to evaluate the environmental impact of four manufacturing process, 1 st
is the production of traditional Portland cement, 2nd is blended cement, 3rd is cement where 100%
of waste cement kiln dust is recycled into the kiln process and 4th is Portland cement produced
when cement kiln dust is used to sequester a portion of the process related to carbon dioxide
emissions. They use a software named SimaPro 6.0 that shows blended cements provide the
greatest environmental savings followed by utilization of cement kiln dust for sequestration. It
shows that recycling cement kiln dust can have a little environmental savings over the traditional
process. Heavy metals and acidification has a high impact scores and this is believed to be cause
of artifact types of fuels selected in the incomplete representation of chemical interactions
occurring in a kiln. Pacifying sources of anthropogenic carbon emission will help to lower
greenhouse gas levels globally. Environmental life-cycle assessment is a valuable tool for
understanding the environmental hazards of products and for optimizing the manufacturing
process to reduce adverse environmental impacts. The results of LCA shows that blended
cements provide the greatest environmental savings, the reduction. The utilization of CKD for
sequestration emerge to offer a means to reduce carbon emissions and a reduction in cement’s
environmental impact score of roughly 5% over the traditional Portland cement.

Cement Production Optimization Modeling: A Case Study BUA Plant

This research is made by Joseph Sunday Oyepata and Otunuya Obodeh from Mechanical
Engineering Department of Ambrose Alli University, and their research is about cement
production optimization using Particle Swarm Optimization and the result is compared with
Genetic Algorithm and Pattern Search. This predict the cost benefits of to the manufacturer using
alternative fuel which is agricultural wastes by the optimization simulations models. This
optimization modeling took into account mixture of primary fuel and its alternative fuels. They
work for the possibility of using the mixture of mineral coal, petroleum coke, heavy oil,
agricultural was, etc. as a fuel feed stock which intended to be use in rotary kiln, clinker
production: dry process with a pre-heater and calciner. Particle Swarm Optimization, Genetic
Algorithm and Pattern Search will be generated by MATLAB software. They gather data from
BUA cement plant laboratory and also gather data from major cement group laboratory such as
Lafarge and Holcim Group. The research results will be compared with standard cement result.
They conclude that cement production equipment optimization, the operating rate differs from
the design rate of the equipment. The design rate gives room for increasing and decreasing the
feeding phase for the raw meal and the fuel usage in a rotary kiln allow some freedom for change
in the composition of raw meal and fuel consumption. Minimizing the cost of production without
losing the quality of final production, extend the duration of life of the equipment, while
satisfying the environmental and operation restriction. A model is presented in this paper work in
which the composition of the raw meal and the fuels mixtures enters as variables of a non-linear
programing problem. The solution to this optimization problem finds composition values for the
variable which will result is a cement production with low free lime (CaO) 0.5-1.5, less
environmental pollutants and good quality cement production.
References:
Ali Raza Khalid, M. Haris Hameed (2015). Rubberized Concrete (Rubcrete)
R. Papesch, L. Klus, J. Svoboda and R. Zajac (2017). Research of Cement Mixtures with
Additions of Industrial By-Products
Qiang Zeng, Teddy Fen-Chong, Patrick Dangla and Kefei Li (2010). A Study of Freezing
Behavior of Cementitious Material by Poromechanical Approach
Deborah N. Huntzinger and Thomas Eatmon (2008). A Life-Cycle Assessment of Portland
Cement Manufacturing: Comparing the Traditional Process with Alternative Technologies
Joseph Sunday Oyepata and Otunuya Obodeh (2015). Cement Production Optimization
modeling: A case study BUA plant