Sustainable Alternatives for Green Mortar: Quarry Waste and Ultra high fly ash utilization

The use of waste materials from different industries as a replacement of cement has gained much attention all over the world. In addition, many attempts have been done to replace partially or totally one of the ingredients from the mix design to lower the negative impacts of construction industry. In this study, quarry waste and fly ash were used as two different sustainable approaches to replace the maximum volume of natural alluvial sand and cement, respectively, in the traditional mortar matrix. The quarry waste is a by-product of quarries characterized with a large volume of fines, whereas, fly ash is the by-product of coal-fired electric generation plants. The performance of the green mortars containing the maximized volume of quarry waste and fly ash were evaluated with regard to the mechanical properties. The results have clearly indicated the beneficial use of the quarry waste and fly ash as a substitute for siliceous sand and cement respectively in preparation of green mortars. In addition, the cost and parametric analysis was also performed for a multi-story reinforced concrete building using the designed quarry sand and fly ash as concrete ingredients.