Concrete Without Cement – A Green Alternative

Concrete without cement is possible with the use of flyash as an alternate for cement. Concrete is the most common material used for construction due to its properties such as strength, durability and easy availability. But cement is commonly used in preparation of concrete.

Cement has excellent binding property but its production requires large amount of energy which contributes for pollution and global warming. The process of cement production starts from mining for raw materials, crushing, blending and heating these materials at high temperature of 15000C and finally creating cement from heated materials.

All the process involved in manufacturing of cement requires large amount of energy, it involves huge costs, contributes to increase in CO2 emissions and other greenhouse gases. The production of cement contributes to 7% of the emissions of greenhouse gases and it is likely to double by the year 2014.

As the demand for more and more infrastructures is increasing day by day, the quantity of cement requirements is also increasing. With this, the control the emissions of greenhouse gases cannot be reduced to prevent global warming.

The green alternative to cement is the use of flyash, which has almost same property as cement, both physically and chemically. Flyash is a byproduct from the thermal power plants. It is a waste product and has no other use in power plants. The use of flyash also reduces the energy demand of cement plants as well as reduces the space required for its dumping thus reducing the environmental impact of both cement concrete construction and thermal power plants.

Flyash has been used in the production of cement known as Pozzolanic Portland Cement (PPC) due to its cementitious properties. Generally 25% of flyash is used in OPC to produce PPC.

The property of flyash produced depends on type of coal being used in power plants, nature of combustion process. And the flyash properties suitable for use in cement can be used for concrete construction.

Research at various places in the world has found that concrete in which cement was replaced with flyash, the concrete without cement offered exceptional performance in short term and long term strength of concrete and its workability relative to use of ordinary Portland cement concrete.