Experimental investigation on rice husk ash as cement replacement on concrete production

The emission of CO2 has increased due to cement manufacturing and improper disposal of rice hush ash (RHA) leads to air pollution and land fill problem. To mitigate these issues, the RHA has been used as cement additive in concrete making. A Taguchi L-27 fractional-factorial matrix was designed to assess the individual effects of key process variables like RHA loading, pozzolanicity, curing time, bulk density and RHA size. From the results, mechanical strength increased with decreasing RHA size and 20 wt% RHA replacement is optimum for 15 and 60 min grounded sample. The morphology of RHA are also discussed. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.