Using Reuse of Debris of Damaged Buildings by Armed Conflicts in Libya and Mill Scale Scrap to Produce Sustainable Concrete

Abstract

In Libya, recycling of waste materials is not a common practice. The enormous amount of waste resulting from the destruction of the buildings due to the armed conflict, could be witnessed in most parts of the country. This paper aims to present more sustainable and environmental friendly concrete mix design by utilizing some of the locally available debris waste and mill scale scrape.

The previous studies carried out in this area favors the possibility of the effective utilization of locally available building debris in concrete mix design. In this research work, two types of sustainable materials (recycled concrete aggregates and steel mill scale) were incorporated to the concrete mix design. Firstly, the recycled concrete aggregates were used as a substitute of natural aggregates in certain proportions (i.e. 10, 30 and 60%). Secondly, steel mill scale was added to the concrete mixture as an alternative to replace a fraction of cement with the following different percentages i.e. 2, 6 and 10%.

The behavior of hardened concrete produced using these sustainable alternatives was investigated by performing the compressive strength, flexural strength of concrete and Ultrasonic Pulse Velocity (UPV) tests. The resultant mechanical properties of the concrete (produced from incorporating debris waste) found satisfactory which further emphasize on the possibility of reusing debris waste in concrete mix design for construction purposes.