Effect of zeolite powder on mechanical properties of concrete

Green house gases are the major cause of global warming and carbon dioxide gas are the major emitted green house gas. Portland cement industry alone is contributing to 7% of global CO2 emission. Many investigations are being done in the field of sustainable concrete to reduce the use of cement for reducing CO2 emission rate from cement industry. Recently some studies were focused on the zeolite powder as a partial replacement of cement. Zeolite is a mineral with silica- aluminium components and occurs on post depositional environment over thousand periods. An experimental investigation was carried out to evaluate the mechanical properties of concrete with zeolite as a partial replacement of cement. Along with that consistency of zeolite cement blended paste was analysed. The analysis were carried out on M30 grade concrete. The result indicated that the addition of zeolite on concrete decrease the compressive strength as compared with normal concrete. This may be due to the increased porosity of concrete by the addition of zeolite along with the longterm pozzolanic reaction of zeolite. Zeolite having slower pozzolanic reaction than the hydration reaction of Portland cement. But the split tensile strength of concrete increased with the replacement of cement with zeolite up to 15% replacement level as compared with control specimen.