ABSTRACT
A lot of types of waste today pollute the environment and occupy great soil surfaces, and cassava peels is not an exception. One way for consuming waste is to use them in obtaining green materials. Polymer concrete such as epoxy resin concrete is a new advanced composite material which is used in construction industry due to its superior properties in comparison with ordinary Portland cement concrete such as higher mechanical strength and chemical resistance. This work reports the outcome of an experiment using cassava peel ash (CPA) and epoxy resin of varying quantities to partially replace cement in the concrete work.
The cassava peel ash was obtained by calcinations of cassava peel to 360 0C temperature. The design of the experiment used 0, 5, 10, 15, 20 and 25% for the both cassava peel ash and epoxy resin. The concrete was batched with a ratio of 1:2:4, with a W/C ratio of 0.5, 0.55 and 0.6 respectively. The cubes produced were allowed to cure for 7, 14, 28 and 56 days. Compressive and flexural strength test were conducted on the cube samples of size 150mm x 150mm x 150mm and 100mm x 100mm x 500mm respectively alongside workability, stetting time and water absorption test.
The result obtained showed that there was no appreciable change in slump by the increase in percentage of concentrations; 38mm, 20mm, 26mm, 29mm, 32mm and 36mm (at 0%, 5%, 10%, 15%, 20%, and 25%). And the result for compressive strength shows that the concrete strength increases with increase in concentrations and curing age. The average compressive strength at 28 days of curing for the control mix (0%) is 31.70N/mm2 while for CPA-epoxy resin concentrations of 5%, 10%, 15%, 20% and 25% are 25.28N/mm2, 26.43N/mm2, 27.38N/mm2, 29.14N/mm2 and 30.95N/mm2 which are 79.75%, 83.38%, 86.37%, 91.92% and 97.63% which shows strength increment as concentrations increases. Same trend of strength increment were noticed also for flexural strength. The control mix has a flexural strength of 3.98MPa and the flexural strength values for 5%, 10%, 15%, 20% and 25% concentration of epoxy resin are; 2.91MPa, 3.12MPa, 3.28MPa, 3.35MPa and 3.50MPa respectively. This is 73.12%, 78.39%, 82.41%, 84.17% and 87.94% showing a progressive increase in strength. It can be cautiously concluded that epoxy resin when used in conjunction with Cassava Peel Ash performs equally as a good binder in concrete without reducing the strength properties of the concrete.
