There is a wide range of research worldwide on supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) such as fly ash and slag for substituting pure cement. Such materials are suitable to be considered in a cementitious system with ordinary Portland cement (OPC) due to their high pozzolanic properties. In addition, majority of the SCMs are said to significantly improve concrete properties especially in terms of increased strength and durability. Unfortunately, the production of such SCMs is not entirely eco-friendly and also limited to certain parts of the world, hence one has to look at alternative options.
The issue of availability of resources is a strong concept that is ever-increasing, and the use of more eco-friendly SCMs in a cementitious system is furthermore attractive. Hence this paper addresses the use of eco-friendly SCMs in concrete such as rice husk ash (RHA). Despite the fact that extensive research has been done on this material, its application in a cementitious system to obtain sufficient concrete properties is still rather limited. In a country like Tanzania, high strength concrete construction is applicable in special construction cases but certainly not a high priority. Majority of construction is still undertaken using normal strength concrete. In a ternary cementitious system consisting of OPC, RHA and other readily available resources such as limestone filler (LSF), normal strength concrete can still be produced having good performance and suitable for regular on-site construction. This paper explains a possible application of obtaining sufficient concrete properties from the available resources.
Rice husk as (RHA) is an eco-friendly material, which can be used as a supplementary cementitious material (SCM) in cement and concrete. Due to the high water demand for the material, superplasticizers (SPs) are essential to improve the performance. However, the interaction between the SPs and RHA systems is limited. This paper investigates the interaction of the binders with three SPs, i.e. two polycarboxylate ethers (PCEs) and one lignosulphonate (LS). The investigations are performed on blended systems of mortar containing various percentages of RHA and limestone powder (LSP). LSP is used in this research to improve the workability of the mortar. The results from the zeta potential (ZP) shows that the SPs are extremely dependent on the pH of the suspension. At higher pH values such as in a cementitious system, the ZP becomes less negative indicating that the ions in the suspension interact with the carboxyl groups in the backbone of the polymers thus reducing the surface charges of the SP. The mini-slump flow shows that the workability of the blended mortar systems is significantly improved with the addition of SPs. LS systems with increasing RHA is observed to have similar workability as the control mix over time. The compressive strength test results show increased strength for all mortar specimens with added RHA and LSP at later ages.