Preliminary study on concrete with polystyrene waste coarse aggregate

Abstract

Polymer recycling has received a great deal of attention in this recent year. Presently, small percentage of polymer wastes in Malaysia has been under going the recycling process. This recycling process has typically been through reprocessing of the waste material into other polymeric items, or energy recovery from complete combustion. Development of concrete with non-conventional aggregate such as polymer waste (especially polystyrene), ceramic waste or any wastes were used to get comparable properties of the conventional concrete and economical aspect. This paper describes experimental study on replacing coarse in conventional concrete with polystyrene waste aggregate to produce a lightweight material. Mixture proportions were varied to investigate the effects of water-cement ratio and polystyrene waste aggregates content to obtain the best result. The properties of the aggregates were also compared. Experimental results indicate that the polystyrene aggregates can be successfully used to produce a lightweight material. The results also indicate that the workability of polystyrene waste aggregates concrete is good and the strength characteristics are comparable to those of the conventional concrete.