Portland cement with battery waste contents

Abstract

Waste from alkaline and carbon batteries is processed in this research and combined with white ordinary Portland cement. In Colombia, battery waste is not used or recycled at all, and those that are collected are put in a landfill facility. After removing the metal, plastic and paper from the battery, the waste is mostly composed of zinc, manganese and iron oxides. This research presents results for the use of these materials, and characterization of the by-products. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-Ray Fluorescence, and compression tests were conducted in this investigation. It was found that samples have good compressive strength, this is over 20MPa for 50wt% of battery waste for a process suitable to improve and increase this value. As expected, results showed that compressive strength decreased as waste content increased.