Recycling

Biography

Biography: Bilqees R

Abstract

Peshawar is a metropolitan city, the administrative center and the economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. The province Khyber Pakhtunkhwa constitutes about more than 90% of the country’s total marble deposits. At Marble processing industries a marble slurry waste is produced by cutting, grinding and polishing machines which is dumped at the industry sites or on roads posing threat to the surrounding environment. This study focuses on the utilization of the slurry waste for use in making cement in order to reduce the burden of the waste on the environment, prevent the negative impact related with marble processing plants, preserve natural resources by reutilizing industrial wastes and reformulate by improving the properties of construction material. The marble waste slurry samples were characterized. The analyses include chemical composition, moisture content, specific gravity, fineness and water absorption. After characterization these samples were blended with various proportions of plaster of Paris, Portland cement, white cement, sand, fiber glass and pigments for use in the preparation of bricks and tiles. These blended samples were tested for compressive and flexural strengths, water absorption and density. This study has revealed that nearly all the mix proportions prepared by using plaster of Paris as binder failed to qualify for the American Standards for Testing Materials (ASTM) C55 for concrete building bricks. Whereas, most of the specimens having 10, 20 and 30% of marble dust along with Portland and white cement as binder qualify for compressive and flexural strengths while there is a huge impact of using glass fiber as reinforcer to increase the flexural strength of the specimens. The main findings of this study showed the economic feasibility of using marble slurry waste in the form of marble powder in the preparation of mix proportions of concrete bricks and tiles.