Pozzolanic properties of agro waste ashes for potential cement replacement predicted using ANN

Abstract

Every year, cement demand increases due to infrastructural development in our country, which indirectly increases global warming since the manufacturing of Portland cement emits a large volume of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Hence, the demand of using Portland cement should be reduced by using various types of mineral admixtures as a replacement to Cement. In India, every year agricultural sector produces a large volume of waste by-products like corncob, rice husk, sugarcane bagasse, bamboo leaves etc., which could be burnt in a controlled environment and the resulted ashes could be used as partial replacement to Cement. The pozzolanic activity of agro-waste ashes like rice husk ash, cocoa fruit shell ash, corncob ash, bamboo leaves ash, sugarcane bagasse ash have been tested and compared using the strength activity test, the saturated lime test and the Frattini test with the implementation of Artificial Intelligence using Neural Network was carried out. It is observed that Rice husk ash, corncob ash, bamboo leaf ash, sugar cane bagasse ash have the potential to be replaced for Cement while cocoa fruit shell ash does not have the expected pozzolanic activity. The predicted pozzolanic strength property of the different agro-waste ashes with the utilization of Artificial Neural Network was observed to correspond with experimental values.