Utilization of textile industry by-products to develop and optimize geopolymerized mud concrete for sustainable construction

Abstract

The industrial sector generates large quantities of by-products daily, posing environmental challenges due to disposal issues and global warming. To address this issue, researchers have successfully incorporated these by-products into sustainable building materials. Geopolymerized Mud Concrete is an existing eco-friendly concept that introduced an alternative stabilizer for Mud Concrete by utilizing fly ash, which is generated from the coal combustion process. This study focuses on developing and optimizing the Geopolymerized Mud Concrete mix using textile industry by-products, highlighting its potential as a sustainable alternative to Cement-Based Concrete. The mix design was prepared using soil, wood ash, textile wastewater, and NaCl. Wood ash served as the aluminosilicate source for geo-polymerization, while textile wastewater was used as an alkaline activator instead of commercial NaOH. Both materials were collected from the textile manufacturing industry. The feasibility of textile wastewater as an alkaline activator was assessed through FTIR analysis. Additionally, SEM-EDX was performed to analyse morphology, particle size, and elemental composition of wood ash which affects the strength variation. The study aimed to optimize key parameters, including moisture content, wood ash content, and textile wastewater concentration (pH value) based on the 7, 14, and 28-day compressive strength values of the mix. The results showed that the optimum wood ash content was 20%, and the optimum moisture content ranged from 20% - 22% from the dry weight of the mix. The optimum textile wastewater concentration was shown at pH 12. Furthermore, the findings confirmed that the unconfined compressive strength of the developed concrete mix met the standard requirements for earth-based masonry units.