Experimental investigation of strength properties of red mud concrete

Abstract

Red mud (RM) or alumina refinery residues (ARR), is a highly alkaline waste product composed mainly of iron oxide that is generated in the industrial production of alumina (aluminum oxide, the principal raw material used in the manufacture of aluminum metal and also widely used in the manufacture of ceramics, abrasives and refractories). The scale of production of RM is in million tons per year, causing serious disposal problem in the mining industry. In order to avoid environmental hazards, every opportunity is explored to find the effective use of red mud. In this present report, an experiment was carried out to obtain the compatibility and utilization of red mud along with cement to produce a low cost green concrete. Partial replacement of cement with red mud was taken place in this experiment for the development of red mud concretes. Total five numbers of concrete developed in the laboratory to assess the fresh and hardened characteristics. This particular project work focuses on the effective use and suitability of locally available red mud for the partial replacement with cement for various civil engineering constructions. The red mud percentage for replacement of cement is varied from 0% to 20%. From the experimental work it was found that 5 to 10 percentage replacements have no significant effect on 28 days strength properties where as beyond 10% drastic drop in compressive strength was noticed.