Sustainability benefits and commercialization challenges and strategies of geopolymer concrete: A review

Rapid urbanization, industrialization, and economic expansion are driving up demand for cement-based products, particularly concrete, resulting in high levels of greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. This instigated investigators to look for environmentally sustainable mate-rials to replace conventional concrete, like geopolymer concrete (GPC). Moreover, despite four decades of extensive research on GPC, it has yet to be commercialized. This article presents a review explaining the need for GPC, as well as its sustainability benefits, and commercialization challenges and strategies. The sustainability analysis includes applications, cost-effectiveness, and environmental friendliness of GPC. The commercialization challenges deal with inconsistent material characterization and performance of GPC; complex transformation of the cement in-dustry; and conflicting economic and environmental parameters of GPC. Finally, commerciali-zation strategies describe the implementation of emission control policies, design codes and specifications, and awareness among people regarding GPC. It is concluded that geopolymeric materials have a wide range of applications owing to their environmental friendliness, higher strength, and enhanced endurance. However, comprehensive research is required to understand the inconsistencies in the performance of GPC prepared with similar constituents. Moreover, the bulk nonavailability of waste aluminosilicate sources with similar properties to be used in GPC is another major challenge, which may increase the cost and inconsistent performance of GPC. Of the different commercialization strategies discussed, the formulation of design codes and speci-fications is the most important strategy to commercialize GPC. This article will lay a strong foundation for future research that will work in a specific direction to eliminate conflicting views regarding the performance standards of GPC and disseminate a positive perception of GPC among stakeholders.