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Rice husk (RH) as additive in fly ash based geopolymer mortar

Conference Paper  in  AIP Conference Proceedings · September 2017

DOI: 10.1063/1.5002415

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Rice husk (RH) as additive in fly ash based geopolymer mortar
Zarina Yahya, Rafiza Abd Razak, Mohd Mustafa Al Bakri Abdullah, Mohd Azrin Adzhar Rahim, and Armia Nasri

Citation: AIP Conference Proceedings 1885, 020221 (2017); doi: 10.1063/1.5002415

View online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.5002415
View Table of Contents: http://aip.scitation.org/toc/apc/1885/1
Published by the American Institute of Physics
 Rice Husk (RH) as Additive in Fly Ash based Geopolymer
Mortar
Zarina Yahya1,2,a), Rafiza Abd Razak1,2,b), Mohd Mustafa Al Bakri Abdullah1,2,c),
Mohd Azrin Adzhar Rahim2,d) and Armia Nasri3,e)
1
Center of Excellence Geopolymer and Green Technology, School of Materials Engineering, Universiti Malaysia
Perlis (UniMAP), Kangar, Perlis, Malaysia.
2
Faculty of Engineering Technology, Universiti Malaysia Perlis (UniMAP), Kampus Uniciti Alam, Padang Besar,
Perlis, Malaysia.
3
Universitas Ubudiyah Indonesia (UUI), Jln Alue Naga Desa Tibang, Banda Aceh, Indonesia.

Corresponding author: a)zarinayahya@unimap.edu.my

b)
rafizarazak@unimap.edu.my
c)
mustafa_albakri@unimap.edu.my
d)
azrinadzhar@gmail.com
e)
armia.nasri@uui.ac.id

Abstract. In recent year, the Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) concrete is vastly used as main binder in construction
industry which lead to depletion of natural resources in order to manufacture large amount of OPC. Nevertheless,
with the introduction of geopolymer as an alternative binder which is more environmental friendly due to less
emission of carbon dioxide (CO2) and utilized waste materials can overcome the problems. Rice husk (RH) is an
agricultural residue which can be found easily in large quantity due to production of paddy in Malaysia and it’s
usually disposed in landfill. This paper investigated the effect of rice husk (RH) content on the strength development
of fly ash based geopolymer mortar. The fly ash is replaced with RH by 0%, 5%, 10%, 15% and 20% where the
sodium silicate and sodium hydroxide was used as alkaline activator. A total of 45 cubes were casted and their
compressive strength, density and water absorption were evaluated at 1, 3, and 7 days. The result showed
compressive strength decreased when the percentage of RH increased. At 5% replacement of RH, the maximum
strength of 17.1MPa was recorded at day 7. The geopolymer has lowest rate of water absorption (1.69%) at 20%
replacement of RH. The density of the sample can be classified as lightweight geopolymer concrete.

INTRODUCTION
Geopolymer technology has been introduce as promising alternative binder to replace the ordinary Portland
cement (OPC) in construction industry. According to Davidovits [1], geopolymer technology could reduce the
carbon dioxide (CO2) emission into the atmosphere that caused by OPC production and aggregate industries about
80%. Moreover, geopolymer also showed excellent mechanical properties compared to OPC [2-3]. From the
perspective of sustainable development, the geopolymer technology was well fitted within this aspects where it
involved waste management, produced using renewable sources with small environmental impact and also low
energy in manufacturing process.
Rice husk (RH) is a waste material from rice milling industry where it was estimated about 70 million tons of
RH is produced annually worldwide [4]. The utilization of RH as pozzolanic material in concrete provides several
advantages such as improved strength and durability, reduced production cost and give more environmental benefits
to human. The suitability of RH as additive materials in concrete is due amorphous silica content (90 - 95 wt %) [5].
Hwang and Huynh [6] investigated the effect of NaOH concentration and rice husk ash (RHA) content on fly ash

3rd Electronic and Green Materials International Conference 2017 (EGM 2017)
AIP Conf. Proc. 1885, 020221-1–020221-6; doi: 10.1063/1.5002415
Published by AIP Publishing. 978-0-7354-1565-2/$30.00

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based geopolymer. They found that, at NaOH concentration 10 Molar and RHA content of 35% lead to maximum
compressive strength. Meanwhile, Sturm et al. [7] used solid sodium aluminate and water as alkaline activator to
synthesis RHA based geopolymer where oven curing (80 °C) was applied. The maximum compressive strength of
30 MPa were recorded after one day curing. RHA has been investigated for its use in many industrial application
especially as admixture for OPC concrete and also in geopolymer concrete. However, there are less study on the
utilization of RH as admixture or as source material for geopolymer.
In this research, we report on the use of RH as additive in the production of fly ash based geopolymer mortar.
The main objective of present research is to investigate the effect of RH content (0 – 20%) on the compressive
strength development, water absorption and density.

MATERIALS AND EXPERIMENTAL METHODS

Materials
The fly ash was obtained from CIMA, Perlis, Malaysia and it was classified as class F according to ASTM
C618-12a [8]. Meanwhile, rice husk (RH) as in Figure 1 were obtained from a BERNAS rice mill in Perlis,
Malaysia. The chemical composition of both materials has been determined using X-ray Fluorescence (XRF) as
listed in Table 1. River sand has been used as fine aggregates.

FIGURE 1: Rice husk (RH).

TABLE 1: Chemical composition of fly ash and RH.

Component Fly Ash (Weight, %) Rice Husk (Weight, %)
SiO2 55.9 86.1
Al2O3 27.8 0.17
CaO 3.95 1.03
Fe2O3 7.09 2.87
TiO2 2.25 -
K2O 1.55 4.65
SrO 0.37 -
ZrO2 0.13 -
RuO2 0.24 -

A technical grade of sodium silicate (Na2SiO3) solution and sodium hydroxide (NaOH) solution was used as
alkaline activator. The NaOH concentration used in this study is 12 Molar [2,9] and it was prepared by diluting
NaOH pellets with distilled water where it allowed to cool down to room temperature before it was used.

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 Sample preparation
Prior to mixing process, all of the required materials were prepared according to mix design as in Table 2. The
ratio of solid/liquid (S/L), Na2SiO3/NaOH and sand/fly ash were fixed at 2.0, 2.5 and 0.3 [10-11]. The RH was
added in the range of 0% to 20% by weight of the binder. A mechanical mixer was used to mix all the materials until
homogeneous mixture was obtained. Firstly fly ash, sand and RH were mixed together for about 5 minutes. Then,
alkaline activator was added and mixing continued for another 5 minutes in order to produce uniform mixtures. The
fresh geopolymer mortar were placed into 100mm x 100mm x 100mm moulds in three layer and each layer were
compacted 35 times. After that, the moulds were placed at vibrating tables for 10 seconds to release entrapped air
and cured at room temperatures. Three samples were used for each mix design to determine the optimum
compressive strength on 1, 3 and 7 days.

TABLE 2: Sample mix proportion of geopolymer mortar.

Sample RH0 (g) RH5 (g) RH10 (g) RH15 (g) RH20 (g)
Fly ash 1200 1140 1080 1020 960
RH 0 60 120 180 240
Sand 360 360 360 360 360
NaOH solution 171.43 171.43 171.43 171.43 171.43
Na2SiO3 solution 428.57 428.57 428.57 428.57 428.57

Test and analysis methods

The density test was performed by weighing the sample after curing in room temperature at 1, 3, and 7 days
using Electronic Balance. Compressive strength test (ASTM C109) was performed on cube samples using Universal
Testing Machine (UTM) where the maximum load is recorded and the strength of the geopolymer mortar is
calculated based on the compressive strength obtained. The water absorption is defined as the amount of weight gain
(%) by geopolymer samples after immersion in water 24 hours under controlled environment. The samples used for
water absorption test was weight before immersed in a water at room temperature for 1, 3 and 7 days. After that, the
mass of the sample was measured and saturated weight was recorded.

RESULT AND DISCUSSION

Density
Table 3 shows the density of geopolymer mortar on 1, 3 and 7 days where sample RH5 displayed the maximum
density (1795.8 kg/m3). Moreover, the density for all samples is less than 1920 kg/m 3 and according to ASTM C330
[11] this geopolymer samples can be categorized as lightweight concrete. As the age of sample increases, there is a
slight decrease in density with different percentage of RH. When aging days increased, the moisture insides the
samples evaporated hence reduce the density. Meanwhile, geopolymer samples with 20% replacement of RH
indicated the lowest density. This can be attributed to the fact that increasing the percentage of RH, the content of
binder (fly ash) reduced as well as density of sample.

TABLE 3: Density of geopolymer mortar.

Sample Day 1 [kg/m3] Day 3 [kg/m3] Day 7 [kg/m3]
RH0 1820.3 1801.6 1787.8
RH5 1795.8 1794.5 1774.5
RH10 1734.0 1732.3 1714.3
RH15 1704.5 1664.5 1660.3
RH20 1651.6 1650.4 1649.3

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 Compressive Strength
The compressive strength of geopolymer samples with different percentage of RH was illustrated in Figure 2. All
samples showed increment in strength with the increasing of aging days. However, the compressive strength of all
samples decreased as a percentage of RHA increased. It can be observed that RH5 has highest value of compressive
strength (17.1 MPa) and RH20 has the lowest compressive strength (6MPa) at day 7. The geopolymer slurry with
high content of RH was extremely sticky which resulted in difficulty of compacting process hence leads to low
compressive strength. Additionally, the presence of voids in RH20 sample also caused by insufficient binder (fly
ash) to react with alkaline activator hence reduced the strength. Besides that, the relatively larger of RH particles
also influence the geopolymerisation rate which resulted in weaker geopolymer samples [12].
In order to produce high strength lightweight geopolymer concrete it usually required high content of
cementitious materials. For the current study, the lack of homogeneity in geopolymer slurry contributed to strength
reduction as well as the chemical composition of RH.

FIGURE 2: Variation of compressive strength of different mix.

Water Absorption
The water absorption of geopolymer samples increased linearly with RH content where the maximum value
(1.69%) were recorded at RH20 samples as described in Figure 3. High content of RH leads to high porosity of
geopolymer samples as well as water absorption. The value of water absorption increased about 20% when RH was
added into the geopolymer sample (RH5) compared to control sample. Figure 4b showed the surface of geopolymer
samples with content of RH 5% and there are voids which lead to increment of water absorption. The surface texture
of geopolymer become rougher when the content of RH increased as well as the existence of voids (Figure 4c-4e).
Due to this circumstances, water can penetrate easily through these voids when the samples immersed in water.

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 FIGURE 3: Water absorption of geopolymer mortar with different percentage of rice husk ash.

FIGURE 4: Surface texture of geopolymer samples

CONCLUSIONS

The used of RH as additive in fly ash mortar has been investigated throughout this research. The overall density
in whole research in range 1600 to 1820kg/m3 that can be categories as lightweight concrete. Replacement of RH5
in fly ash has higher compressive strength compared to other sample which is suitable to be used in geopolymer
mortar. The higher percentage of RH resulting in decreasing the compressive strength in the mortar affected by
highly void space in the sample. The compressive strength increase when the curing time increase. RH20 has lowest
water absorption for 24 hours compared to the control sample because it has less void that prevent the sample absorb
more water.

REFERENCES

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