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h i g h l i g h t s
New lightweight materials are produced by using EPS and resin.
The new produced materials are subjected to thermal and mechanical tests.
The new produced samples can be used as partition walls, floorings, ceiling concretes, briquettes or bricks and plaster.
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history:
Received 28 January 2015
Received in revised form 8 December 2015
Accepted 22 December 2015
Available online 4 January 2016
Keywords:
Expanded polystyrene waste
Tragacanth
Light concretes
Insulation materials
a b s t r a c t
In this study, the waste expanded polystyrene (EPS) was used in a mixture of cement and tragacanth resin
in order to produce a new concrete material. The amount of the resin in the mixture was 0.5%, 1% and
1.5% of the total cement + EPS. The EPS ratios in the samples were determined as 20%, 40%, 60% and
80% of the total volume.
The new samples were subjected to some tests to find out some thermal and mechanical properties. It
was concluded that, when EPS ratios and resin ratios of the samples increased, the density, thermal conductivity, compressive strength and tensile strength decreased, and the porosity increased. The change in
the physical properties shows that, some artificial pores (except from EPSs pores) are formed in concrete
blocks which allow to increase the insulation characteristic of the material.
As a result, it was recommended that; using EPS aggregated and resin-added concrete, (i) the waste EPS
can be evaluated and environmental pollution can be prevented, (ii) the new produced samples can be
used as partition walls, floorings, ceiling concretes, briquettes or bricks and plaster instead of buildingcarrier systems such as columns or beams and by this the load of the building can be decreased.
2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Lightweight aggregates are broadly classified into two types;
natural (pumice, volcanic cinders etc.) and artificial (perlite,
expanded clay, fly ash etc.). The expanded polystyrene (EPS) beads
is a type of artificial ultra-lightweight [1]. The EPS is a packaging
and insulation material which is widely used in a variety of industrial fields in the world. This material is released to the nature after
it is used once and is hard to disappear through natural means. For
this reason, recycling of EPS is essential in terms of economy and
environmental pollution. The research on the recycling of waste
EPS can be grouped under two categories. The first category
includes the studies on using EPS as aggregate in concrete and
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: abicer@firat.edu.tr (A. KAYA).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2015.12.177
0950-0618/ 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
573
In the present study, instead of conventional components, tragacanth resin and EPS particles were added in a mixture. As known,
the tragacanth absorbs the water during the time that it is kept in
the water then it swells. After the swelled tragacanth is added into
the cement and EPS, it remains to dye, and so the absorbed water
inside the mixture vaporizes and this results with new pores.
Thats to say that, additionally to the EPSs pores extra artificial
pores occur in the mixture. In order to determine the impact of
resin addition on the material, the produced samples are subjected
to mechanical and thermal tests. The results of the test are compared to the properties of similar materials.
2. Experimental
2.1. Materials
The EPS is a material that it consists of air in 98%, and the rest is polystyrene
[19,20]. Block EPS obtained from EPS manufacturing facility are used in the production of samples at the disintegration unit of the same factory according to 03 mm
particle diameters.
Tragacanth is a kind of glue which leaks from the wounds opened on the body of
astragalus plant. It is in the form of circular plates or different shaped parts with
0.53 mm thickness and 13 cm diameter. Its color is white or light yellow and it
is odorless [21,22]. It is a polysaccharide mixture. The portion which dissolves in
water is coined trigakantin and the part which is not dissolved in water is called
bassorin. It is used in pharmaceutics technique for making such preparations as
emulsion, suspension, pastille and tablet; in marbling art it is used in dye and fabric
industry. Tragacanth resin, which is obtained dry, is remained in water and waited
for 48 h for swelling and expansion; then it is knead and filtered to make a solution.
CEM IV/B (P) 32.5 R pozzolanic cement is used to a gum tragacanth-water solution as a binder to EPS. The cement components are given in Table 2.
Table 2
Chemical composition of cement used (%).
Chemical characteristics
Cement (%)
Silica (SiO2)
Alumina (Al2O3)
Ferric oxide (Fe2O3)
Calcium oxide (CaO)
Magnesium oxide (MgO)
SO3
Sodium oxide (Na2O)
Sodium oxide (Na2O)
Chlorine, (Cl)
Loss on ignition (L0I)
Not available
23.51
6.15
4
58.51
2.27
2.37
0.10
2.04
1.05
Table 1
Physical properties of similar studies.
Material
Experimental values
Literature
Density (g/cm3)
1.473
1.300
1.150
0.5780.600
0.4920.961
10
217
1.010
0.870
0.700
0.65
1.57
0.593
1.390
0.536
1.232
0.482
1.083
0.625
0.516
0.470
0.130
0.1640.300
0.0368
0.0555
0.220
0.160
0.140
0.061
0.390
0.056
0.350
0.050
0.320
0.048
0.284
23.30
16.00
10.50
1.77 (N/mm2)
0.89.2
0.12
8.12
2.67
2.35
1.35
1.82
16.87
1.12
14.6
0.89
10.85
0.46
5.87
[3]
[4]
[5]
[9]
[23]
Present
574
q
f ctk 0:35 f ck
where fck is the compressive strength (MPa) and fctk is the tensile strength (MPa).
The aim of water absorption test is to investigate the maximum amount of
observed water ratio in the samples. This property is important in determining
the suitability of the sample against freezing hazards. The critical amount of moisture is 30% of the total dry volume, below which the material does not deform on
freezing [19]. The experiments are performed according to the BS 812 Part 2 standard by keeping the specimens in the water during 24 h. The water absorption values are calculated by Eq. (2) and drying ratio values are calculated by Eq. (3).
where Wk is the dry weight of sample and Wd is the wet weight of sample
The density method is used to determine the porosity of the samples. Porosity
(U) is defined by Eq. (4), [24].
U 1
qporous
qsolid
The Eq. (4) applied to this study can be written as Eq. (5).
/1
qEPS Z qbinder 1 Z
qEPS matrix Z qbinder matrix 1 Z
where qporous is the density of the porous material while qsolid is the density of solid
material (the density of the sample after milling and so causing no porosity). qbinder
is the density of the resin mixture of cement, and qbinder matrix is the density of the
resin mixture of cement with 0% porosity ratio. Z is the EPS ratio (%) and (1 Z) is
the binder ratio (%).
The results determined from Eq. (5) and presented in Table 5. Drilling, grooving
and coloring test has been applied to specimens in usability testing.
EPS
Cement
40
60
80
5.2
450
10.4
900
15.6
1350
20.4
1800
575
Weight (g)
Resin (g)
Resin (lt)
(W + R)/C
EPS (%)
Cement (%)
EPS (g)
Cement (g)
Tragacanth (0%)
Sample 1
Sample 2
Sample 3
Sample 4
80
60
40
20
20
40
60
80
20.4
15.6
10.4
5.2
450
900
1350
1800
470.4
915.6
1360.4
1805.2
0.5
Tragacanth (0.5%)
Sample 5
Sample 6
Sample 7
Sample 8
80
60
40
20
20
40
60
80
20.4
15.6
10.4
5.2
450
900
1350
1800
470.4
915.6
1360.4
1805.2
2.36
4.58
6.8
9.03
0.15
0.29
0.43
0.57
0.5
Tragacanth (1%)
Sample 9
Sample 10
Sample 11
Sample 12
80
60
40
20
20
40
60
80
20.4
15.6
10.4
5.2
450
900
1350
1800
470.4
915.6
1360.4
1805.2
4.71
9.16
13.60
18.05
0.3
0.58
0.85
1.13
0.5
Tragacanth (1.5)
Sample 13
Sample 14
Sample 15
Sample 16
80
60
40
20
20
40
60
80
20.4
15.6
10.4
5.2
450
900
1350
1800
470.4
915.6
1360.4
1805.2
7.1
13.74
20.41
27.08
0.45
0.86
1.3
1.7
0.5
W: Water, R: Resin, C: Cement, resin = total weight (g) resin ratio (%).
Table 5
Thermal and mechanical properties of samples.
Samples
Density
(g/cm3)
Porosity (%)
Thermal conductivity
(W/m K)
Compressive
strength (MPa)
Drying
ratio (%)
Tragacanth (0%)
Sample 1
80
Sample 2
60
Sample 3
40
Sample 4
20
0.648
0.979
1.318
1.567
63.68
39.92
22.86
10.01
0.061
0.135
0.250
0.390
1.82
4.34
11.93
16.87
0.47
0.73
1.20
1.44
16.6
19.55
22.06
23.41
8.32
11.66
14.10
16.83
Tragacanth (0.5%)
Sample 5
80
Sample 6
60
Sample 7
40
Sample 8
20
0.593
0.845
1.135
1.390
64.99
41.32
23.90
10.56
0.056
0.119
0.211
0.350
1.12
2.58
7.95
14.6
0.37
0.57
0.99
1.33
19.26
22.05
24.89
25.03
9.42
13.06
15.98
19.12
Tragacanth (1%)
Sample 9
80
Sample 10
60
Sample 11
40
Sample 12
20
0.536
0.742
1.023
1.232
65.63
42.02
24.43
10.83
0.050
0.112
0.190
0.320
0.89
1.61
5.07
10.85
0.33
0.45
0.79
1.15
21.78
24.16
25.96
26.80
11.81
14.24
17.52
21.65
Tragacanth (1.5%)
Sample 13
80
Sample 14
60
Sample 15
40
Sample 16
20
0.482
0.641
0.891
1.083
67.21
43.75
25.76
11.53
0.048
0.095
0.172
0.284
0.46
0.73
2.78
5.87
0.24
0.30
0.58
0.85
23.64
26.49
28.58
29.41
12.73
15.40
18.99
23.24
The compressive stresses of the samples without resin are measured as 16.87, 11.93, 4.39, 1.82 MPa, whereas they were measured
as 5.87, 2.78, 0.73, 0.46 MPa in the samples with 1.5% resin (Fig. 5
576
cement
EPS
(a)
pore
tragacanth
cement
(b)
Fig. 3. View of samples under microscope; (a) Sample no 4 (EPS 80%, tragacanth 0%), (b) Sample no 16 (EPS 80%, tragacanth 1.5%).
and Table 5). The reason of this decrement is both because of the
pores in EPS and artificial pores in the cement with resin. Those
pores make the thermal conductivity to increase, but mechanical
properties to decrease. The results of the compressive strength
are closer to the ones from Refs. [4,5,23]. Based on these results,
it can be recommended that concretes with EPS aggregates and
tragacanth addition must not be used in columns and beams of
577
Measured values
3
Outer plaster
Inner plaster
Gypsum thin plaster (perlite)
Gypsum rough plaster (perlite)
Plaster with cement (perlite)
Gypsum block (perlite)
Cement block (perlite)
Concrete
Ceramic
Ytong wall
Literature
Density (g/cm )
Tavr (C)
Density (g/cm3)
Tavr (C)
1.856
1.763
0.465
0.465
0.672
1.047
0.427
2.500
1.077
0.617
31
33
34
50.7
51.3
40
37.7
27
27.7
38.7
1.173
1.163
0.244
0.168
0.173
0.372
0.292
1.420
0.214
0.180
1.600
1.800
0.400.50
0.400.50
0.700
0.900
0.1046
2.272
2.00
0.800
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
24
20
20
0.930
1.163
0.1390.162
0.1390.162
0.244
0.221
0.300
1.512
0.988
0.383
578
Fig. 9. (a) and (b) Drilling photos (c) silicone rubber coating photos (two coats), (d) oil painting.
4. Conclusions
This paper is carried out to show the possibility of the use of
waste EPS and resin instead of natural aggregate materials in concrete. The following conclusions can be drawn from this experimental study:
In the resin added samples, because of the artificial micro pores
caused by resin, the density decreases and total porosity
increases. For this reason thermal conductivity of samples
decrease and insulation properties of the material improve. Comparatively to the results from references in archival journals, the
thermal properties of the samples with the EPS and resin, it seems
that the results are agreeable and satisfactory (Tables 1 and 6).
The lowest thermal conductivity coefficient of the samples with
2080% EPS and 1.5% resin samples was measured as 0.048
0.284 W/m K in samples and 0.0610.390 W/m K in samples
without resin. Thermal conductivitys of samples are very smaller than traditional aggregate concrete. But, when these materials are evaluated along with their compressive and tensile
strength values, they can be evaluated as low-density concrete
platen walls, apron concretes, briquettes and brick walls. Using
lightweight concrete and plaster mixed with EPS and resin will
be lighter an earthquake damages will be mitigated; in addition,
insulation characteristic of the material will be reinforced
which will ensure energy efficiency.
Water absorption rates appeared below 30% in all samples. For
this reason the produced materials can be used without the risk
of freezing in places with direct contact with water, like outer
plaster and walls which directly contact with water.
These materials can be cut with saw, drilled with screw and
painted with any kind of paint.
As a result, the EPS aggregate cement with tragacanth resin
offers can be potential construction and insulation materials
and simultaneously solve the environmental problem by recycling solid waste.
References
[1] K.G. Babu, D.S. Babu, Behavior of lightweight expanded polystyrene concrete
containing silica fume, Cem. Concr. Res. 33 (2003) 755762.
[2] D.S. Babu, K.G. Babu, T.H. Wee, Properties of lightweight expanded polystyrene
aggregate concretes containing fly ash, Cem. Concr. Res. 35 (2005) 12181223.