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Effects of activated carbon on the compressive strength of Portland cement concrete

  • Sungmin Youn (Department of Civil Engineering, Marshall University) ;
  • Andrew Ball (Department of Civil Engineering, Marshall University) ;
  • Claire Fulks (Department of Civil Engineering, Marshall University) ;
  • Sanghoon Lee (Department of Computer Sciences and Electrical Engineering, Marshall University) ;
  • Sukjoon Na (Department of Civil Engineering, Marshall University)
  • Received : 2022.11.10
  • Accepted : 2023.02.26
  • Published : 2023.04.25

Abstract

A series of experiments were performed to evaluate the effects of activated carbon on the compressive strength and air content of Portland Cement Concrete (PCC). Activated carbon/PCC composites were prepared by mixing concrete components with commercial activated carbon granules with weight fractions of 0, 0.5%, 1%, and 2% to cement. All PCC specimens were then tested for compressive strength on 7, 14, 21, and 28 days. The experimental results showed that adding 0.5% of activated carbon increased the compressive strength significantly over the curing periods compared to the normal PCC without activated carbon. For the specimens has 0.5% activated carbon, the 7, 14, 21, and 28-day compressive strengths increased by 28.7%, 22.2%, 26.8%, and 22.9%, respectively. However, adding excessive amounts of more than 1% activated carbon had a minimal effect on the compressive strength or even decreased it, which agrees with other studies. Regarding the air contents of the mixtures, adding activated carbon decreased the air content from 3.6% to around 1.5%. The surface morphologies of fine aggregates and activated carbon particles were compared using a novel image processing technique. The results indicated that the surface of activated carbon significantly differs from that of aggregates.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

The authors gratefully acknowledge the College of Engineering and Computer Sciences at Marshall University for their support during the experiments of this study. Patrick Quinlan, Jr.is acknowledged for their assistance in material preparation and strength analysis. We used equipment located in the Marshall University Molecular and Biological Imaging Center for the SEM portion of the work, and we thank Michael L. Norton and David Neff for training and assistance.

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