Sustainable use of reservoir sediment through partial application in building material

Abstract

Sediment, often considered a by-product of various activities within river basin management to be disposed of, or a pollutant to be controlled, is increasingly being acknowledged as a resource in need of management. The paper deals with the possibility of reusing sediment from two Slovak reservoirs (Klusov and Ruzin) as an alternative raw material in concrete production. Concrete specimens were prepared by a combination of original reservoir sediment, reservoir sediment mechanically activated by dry milling, reservoir sediment mechanically activated by dry milling together with biomass incinerator fly-ash as a binder. To improve the strength properties of specimens, sodium hydroxide (NaOH) was used as a sediment activator. Mixtures containing 40% of binder replacement by the above-mentioned combinations of original and treated sediments were tested for flexural and compressive strengths after 28, 90 and 365 days of curing. The results showed that the mixtures prepared from sediments milled without and with addition of fly ash as cement replacement satisfied the strength requirements for the compressive strength class C16/20 according to the European standard except the composites prepared with NaOH as the sediment activator. Addition of NaOH into composites in the concentration of 5 M as an activator of sediment indicated the negative impact on compressive and flexural strengths and thus NaOH was not an effective pozzolanic activator for sediments. This study reveals that the sediment may be considered as 40% cement substitution in building materials.