Utilization of recycled plastic for plastic-based concrete

Abstract

The environmental aspects of sustainable development in the construction industry consist in the utilization of secondary raw materials in design and construction of new structures. Recycling of waste plastics reduces environmental impacts such as global warming and climate change, raw material and energy consumption, waste production and total environmental pollution. The fact that China significantly reduced the import of plastic waste in 2017 raises the question of dealing with this waste in other states. A complicated recycling process of waste plastics puts pressure on scientific community to find new, more efficient ways of using this waste in the construction industry. Waste plastics recycling for use in concrete building applications takes place predominantly in two forms: replacing natural aggregate with plastic aggregate and using fibre for fibre-reinforced concrete. The paper deals with the behavior and mechanical properties of a completely innovative material called polymerbeton, which is composed of aggregate and plastic waste, which replaces cement as a binder. The completely unique composition of this concrete required testing of production technologies and standard quasi-static experimental tests to obtain basic knowledge about the behavior and mechanical properties of this composite. The obtained knowledge show that special attention must be paid to the production of material, which takes place at elevated temperatures. This composite has a relatively high tensile strength compared to conventional concrete and brittle fracture behavior. In the next phases of the research project the optimization of the production technologies and the composition of the composite will be provided.