Foamed Concrete using Red Gypsum and Palm Oil Fuel Ash: A Sustainable Building Material

¹ Department of Civil Engineering, LBS Institute of Technology for Women, Trivandrum, Kerala.
² Dept. of Civil Engineering, LBS Institute of Technology for Women, Trivandrum, Kerala.

^* sajankjose@lbsitw.ac.in

Abstract

Concrete is the most commonly used building material. Even then, it has a drawback that it hasheavy density. Hence, researches are progressing everywhere to develop a new building material, which has low density, less water absorption as well as economical. And here lies the importance of foamed concrete. Foamed concrete is a type of lightweight concrete in which stable foam is used as the main ingredient. Stable foam is produced from standard foaming agent using a foam generator. The peculiarity of foamed concrete is that no coarse aggregate is used in it. An attempt is made in this research to use palm oil fuel ash as a partial replacement for cement and red gypsum as a partial replacement for manufactured sand. Both of these materials are waste materials and are abundantly available. The concrete made up of this will be more sustainable as well as economical. By adjusting the addition of stable foam, foamed concrete of various densities can be developed. Foamed concrete blocks made up of these materials can be used for load bearing as well as non-load bearing masonry works. It has been observed that the addition of Palm Oil Fuel Ash and Red Earth has improved the properties of foamed concrete.