Properties of Concrete Produced with Waste Bottle Caps (WBC) as a Partial Replacement of Coarse Aggregate and Orange Leaves Powder as Plasticizer

Abstract

Green building is an increasingly important global concern and a critical way to conserve natural resources and reduce the amount of materials going to our landfills. Large quantities of metal waste are generated from empty metal cans and bottle caps of juices and soft drinks. This is an environmental issue as metal waste is difficult to biodegrade and involves processes either to recycle or reuse. Today the construction industry is in need of finding effective materials for increasing the strength of concrete structures with low cost, and with less environmental damage. This research is aimed at addressing such issues by investigating the possibility of using waste bottle caps (WBC) to partially substitute for coarse aggregate and using orange leaves powder as plasticizer in concrete production. The slump, demoulded density, split tensile strength, compressive strength, flexural strength properties at different percentages replacement of coarse aggregate with waste bottle caps were investigated in the laboratory. The work shows that compressive strengths of 83.88%, 76.25% and 63.17% of the control (0%) can be achieved at the 28-day by replacing coarse aggregate with 5%, 10% and 15% of the waste bottle caps respectively. The research also indicates that optimum result in terms of compressive strength is between 5% and 15% of gravel replacement given a value of 35.85N/mm² and 27N/mm² respectively.

Keywords: Landfills, Green building, Compressive strength, Flexural strength, Waste Bottle Caps, Construction industry and Biodegrade