Compressive Strength of Geopolymer Mortar Produced from Fire Brick and Ceramic Waste

The production of Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) generates about 7% of global CO2 emissions. Geopolymer concrete could be a successful alternative to the ordinary Portland concrete. Construction and Demolishing Wastes (CDWs) have the potential of containing of alkaline activation binders due to their rich nature of aluminosilicate. This study investigates the possibility of producing geopolymer concrete using Fire brick (FB) and Ceramic Waste (CW) CDWs based materials as binders. This was achieved through evaluating the compressive strength of the produced geopolymer mortar. The main tested parameters were; the type of binders (FB and CW), the activator molarity (10, 12, and 15) M, the activator (Sodium Silicate to Sodium Hydroxide) ratio (1, 1.5, 2, 1 and 2.5), curing conditions (ambient and heating) and curing period (age) (7, 14 and 28) days. It was mainly found that both binders could be a successful potential to produce geopolymer concrete. The FB-based mortar showed higher compressive strength than the counterpart CW-based mortar for all considered parameters. Overall, it seems that the chemical composition of the binder was the main factor affecting the compressive strength of the resulted geopolymer.