7/9/24, 2:43 PM Application of steel slag in cement treated aggregate base course - ScienceDirect

Journal of Cleaner Production

Volume 269, 1 October 2020, 121733

Application of steel slag in cement treated

aggregate base course
Jinzhou Liu a, Bin Yu a , Qian Wang b

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Highlights

• The water absorption of the steel slag is greater than limestone.

• Best overall performance can be obtained when the replacement content of

steel slag is 50%.

• The content of silica fume in steel slag mixture is preferably 3% to prevent

expansion.

• Steel slag increases the hydration products, meanwhile reinforces the

electrostatic interaction and bonding with cement.

• Steel slag mixture has sound economic benefit and potential great
environmental benefit compared to limestone mixture.

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7/9/24, 2:43 PM Application of steel slag in cement treated aggregate base course - ScienceDirect

Abstract

Steel slag, which can be used as a cementitious material, is widely used in road engineering.
However, it is less applied in the base course. The feasibility of the application of steel slag
in the road base was examined and the optimal replacement content of aggregate was
determined. Different contents of steel slag (30%, 50%, and 70% by volume) were blended
into the concrete. The mechanical and durability performance of the mixture were tested.
The microstructure and elements distribution were characterized by the scanning electron
microscopy (SEM) and the energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS). The experiments
manifest that steel slag is beneficial for the reinforcement of the strength and shrinkage
performance of concrete, making it possible to replace aggregate. The unconfined
compressive strength (UCS) change trend at 7d is positively related to cement content. The
blend with 50% of steel slag has the maximum strength and stiffness at 4% cement content.
In pace with the steel slag amount increases, the freeze resistance and dry shrinkage
performance of samples increase, but the temperature shrinkage performance decreases.
Besides, the minimum mass losses of samples are those with 50% of steel slag. The
microstructure results imply the addition of steel slag increases the amount of hydration
products, making the structure tighter and of lower porosity. Molecular simulations also
reveal steel slag increases the electrostatic interaction and bonding effect with cement. The
addition of steel slag into the road base is feasible, with the best overall performance
obtained at the content of 50%. Steel slag mixture has sound economic benefit and potential
great environmental benefit compared to limestone mixture. It is worth reminding when
steel slag is applied in an engineering project, production process control of steel slag
aggregate is required.

Introduction

As one of the by-products of steelmaking, steel slag is mainly derived from oxides formed by
molten iron and waste slag. According to statistics, in 2018 steel productivity in China
exceeds 100 million tons (Guo et al., 2018). Therefore, large amounts of waste slag need to be
handled properly. Some of them can be recycled by steel mills (Das et al., 2007; Diao et al.,
2016; Shen et al., 2004), and the rest can be used in engineering and other fields, but most of
them are piled up. These disposed wastes not only occupy massive land resources, but also
produce environment burdens due to leaking of the harmful components in the steel slag.

The high hardness and wear resistance of steel slag make it adequate for roads and
constructions (Guo et al., 2018). If steel slag is used to partially or fully replace the aggregate
in the mixture, not only can the utilization rate of waste slag be improved, but also the
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7/9/24, 2:43 PM Application of steel slag in cement treated aggregate base course - ScienceDirect

shortage of construction resources can be alleviated, and the damage to the environment
will be reduced. European and U.S. pay great attention to the recycling of steel slag
(Geiseler, 1996), and its utilization has reached over 90% in many countries (Guo et al., 2018).
Much work has been organized to apply steel slag to the asphaltic surface course. Chen et al.
(2016) found the combination of silicone resin and hydration modification could effectively
reduce the absorption of bitumen by basic oxygen furnace slag, enhance the volume
stability as well as thermal efficiency of asphalt mixture. Li et al. (2018) explored the
influence of slag powder on low temperature performance of asphalt and compared it to the
performance of ordinary limestone powder. The results manifest that steel slag powder
exhibited less sensitivity of temperature than limestone powder as used in asphalt mastic in
cold regions. As an alternative to natural aggregates, Pasetto and Baldo (2010) compared the
adaptability of two electric arc furnace slag (EAF) in a flexible pavement base course. They
believed the EAF slag displayed almost the same mechanical & physical properties as
traditional aggregates, fully combined with asphalt used in pavement without hazardous
leaching behavior.

Steel slag contains components similar to cement (C2S and C3S). Due to the presence of
gelling components, steel slag is used in place of cement to enhance the strength of
mixtures (Kourounis et al., 2007; Maghool et al., 2017; Sayadi and Hesami, 2017; Shi, 2004,
2002). Gu et al. (2018) observed a mixture of lime, secondary steel slag (SSS), and soil. The
best treatment effect of the reconstructed SSS was obtained in view of the unconfined
compressive strength (UCS) test and the strength development mechanism observed
through SEM. For the propose of upgrading the SSS performance, they further added
Na2SO4, NaCl and NaOH in the mixture and summarized that NaCl and Na2SO4 could
activate SSS and improve strength. Rosales et al. (2017) analyzed the cementation features of
scrap steel slag, and based on the mechanical properties, they recommended that the best
replacement rate of scrap steel slag for cement should not exceed 20%. Zhang et al. (2019)
investigated the feasibility of adding waste slag to ultra-high-performance concrete (UHPC).
Results demonstrate that the blend of steel slag would hinder the early hydration of cement,
whereas has limited impact on the development of later compressive strength. Meanwhile
the shrinkage in UHPC expressed an opposite trend to the content of steel slag.

Previous studies on steel slag in road engineering mostly focused on two aspects. One is to
mix steel slag as aggregate with asphalt. Plenty of researches were conducted for the
investigations of road performance, expansion characteristics, or adhesion mechanism of
the mixtures (Sorlini et al., 2012; Ferreira et al., 2016; Pasetto et al., 2017; Sayadi and Hesami,
2017). The other is to grind steel slag into powder, partially replace the cement as a gelling
role in subgrade or soil foundations (Shen et al., 2009; Ortega-López et al., 2014; Maghool

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7/9/24, 2:43 PM Application of steel slag in cement treated aggregate base course - ScienceDirect

et al., 2017). Relatively few applications are considered on the incorporation of steel slag as
aggregate in the pavement base course yet. Considering that cement stabilized macadam
base would maintain as the main base course form of China’s highway at this stage and
beyond as well as the massive amount of steel slag piled up, the probability of using steel
slag in base course are investigated and the optimum replacement content is determined.
We used different contents (30%, 50%, and 70%) of steel slag and evaluated the performances
through mechanical and durability tests. The surface morphology and elements distribution
of different samples were observed through SEM, aiming to improve the comprehension of
the strength development mechanism of cement treated aggregate after adding steel slag.
Given the limitations of the laboratory results, we also conducted simulation attempts on a
molecular scale. Finally, the economic and environmental benefits of steel slag mixture
were compared. And the issues that may be encountered in project application were
analyzed with the corresponding solutions provided.

Section snippets

Materials

The steel slag for this study was obtained from a steel mill in Suzhou, China. The limestone
was sourced from a stone plant in Wuxi, as shown in Fig. 1, and the standard 42.5 MPa
cement was used as a binder. The physical and mechanical characteristics of two aggregates
were tested, with the results shown in Table 1. The apparent densities of steel slag and
limestone employed are quite different. Steel slag has a higher density than limestone while
an opposite crushing strength. The shape of…

Characteristics of compaction

For each steel slag replace content, two sets of parallel samples were prepared. As an
example, Fig. 11 depicts the relationship of MDD and OMC at 4% cement content. At different
steel slag contents, the MDD are in the range of 2.39–2.56 g/cm3 with the OMC varies from
4.72 to 5.14%. The MDD increases with the content of steel slag, indicating the compactness
of the mixture is positively related to steel slag. There is also a slight rise in the OMC, which
is due to the higher water absorption of …

Quality control of steel slag aggregate

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7/9/24, 2:43 PM Application of steel slag in cement treated aggregate base course - ScienceDirect

Despite the sound results obtained in the laboratory and simulation, the applications of
steel slag in field need more efforts. This section discusses the quality control when using
steel slag aggregate.…

Economic& environmental calculations of steel slag mixtures

A case of highway base course with a length of 1 km, thickness of 20 cm and width of 20m
was used to conduct the economic and environmental calculations of steel slag and
limestone mixtures. Because the steel slag follows the same test procedures of pavement
engineering specifications with sound performance, it is therefore reasonable to consider
the construction process are not significantly different for the two mixtures. In this study,
materials and transportation costs were counted, as…

Conclusions

Steel slag is a potential alternative for aggregate in the road base. In this study, different
contents of steel slag (30%, 50%, and 70%) were added to the cement stabilized macadam.
Based on the results of mechanical properties including strength and stiffness, and
durability results including shrinkage, antifreeze and anti-scouring, the performances of
steel slag mixture were evaluated, and the optimum recipe of steel slag was received. The
strength development mechanism of mixture was…

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Jinzhou Liu: Software, Investigation, Data curation, Formal analysis, Validation, Writing -
original draft, Writing - review & editing. Bin Yu: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing -
review & editing, Supervision, Funding acquisition. Qian Wang: Software, Resources.…

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal
relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.…

Acknowledgement
This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China: [Grant Number
51878163]; Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province: [Grant Number BK20171359].…

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